Lindsey Graham: GOP is in a "Death Spiral"

Having a daughter who once was heavily into competitive figure skating, I have always love the pairs event movement called the "death spiral" ( see image at bottom of post.  But, I like the term even more nowadays as it applies to today's Republican Party and its apparent death wish as it strives to alienate the growing population demographics while prostituting itself to the aging and dying off elderly white Christianist demographic.  Adding to the fum has been Mitt Romney's sour grapes, bitchy comments about Barack Obama having won the election earlier in the month by "giving things" to those Americans Romney views as parasites.  Romney's bullshit was too much even for Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen (pictured above) who today basically told Romney to shut his mouth and go to Hell.  Here are highlights from the Raw Story:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday pleaded with former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to “stop digging” by insulting Hispanic voters because the party was already in a “death spiral.”

In a conference call with donors last week, Romney suggested that he lost his bid for the White House because president Barack Obama bribed Hispanics, African-Americans, women and youth voters with “gifts” like “free health care” and “amnesty for children of illegals.”

“We’re in a big hole [and] we’re not getting out of it by comments like that,” Graham told NBC’s David Gregory on Sunday. “When you’re in a hole, stop digging. He keeps digging.”

“Self deportation being pushed by Mitt Romney hurt our chances,” he explained. “We’re in a death spiral with Hispanic voters because of rhetoric around immigration and candidate Romney in the primary dug the hole deeper.”

Graham concluded: “Most people who are on public assistance don’t have a character flaw, they just have a tough life.”

Will Romney take heed and shut up?  Probably not.  Meanwhile, the GOP leadership seems to be belatedly waking up to the damage being done by allowing the Tea Party and Christofascist elements of the party to control nominations to important candidate slots.  Thus an effort is being launched to block candidates who may be popular with the Kool-Aid drinking elements of the party but who are toxic to mainstream voters.  Politico looks at this effort.  Here are excerpts:

 

In the wake of the GOP’s Election Day beatdown, influential Republican senators say enough’s enough: Party leaders need to put the kibosh on the kind of savage primaries that yielded candidates like Akin — and crippled Republican prospects of taking the Senate in two straight election cycles.

It’s time, they say, for Washington bosses to be more assertive about recruiting and then defending promising candidates. They argue that it’s critical to start enlisting local conservative activists as allies and to ease the tea party versus Washington dynamic that’s wreaked havoc on the party.

All easier said than done, of course. Tea party types have relished showing the chosen candidates of the Washington establishment a thing or two — and it’s hard to see them laying down arms overnight. But after a sure-bet election in 2012 turned into an electoral disaster, Republicans say resolving their primary problem is, well, their primary problem.

[T]he pressure is on for the GOP to do something after the party’s stunning loss of two seats in an election that was supposed to produce a Republican majority.

“Candidates do matter,” said Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of party leadership. “When it’s possible to find the best candidate, you need to find that candidate, encourage that candidate and then support and protect that candidate, so they’re as strong going to the general election as possible.”

Blunt would know. The biggest Republican disappointment of the cycle occurred in his home state, Missouri, when Akin, a six-term congressman, emerged from a three-way primary on the support of evangelical Christians and social conservatives.

In his primary race with John Brunner and Sarah Steelman, Akin was seen as the weakest of the three — and he proved that after his comments about “legitimate rape” and abortion devastated his campaign. Instead of being defeated, the highly vulnerable Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill, mocrat cruised to reelection by 15 percentage points.

Yes, something indeed needs to be done.  How that can be accomplished after the GOP sold its soul to those utterly untethered from objective reality and who want to undernmine religious freedom for all citizens remains to be seen.  When you are dealing with insane and irrational individuals like those among the Christian Right, logic and reason and pragmatic arguments get you nowhere.  The GOP leadership cynically sold out to the Christofascists and I am enjoying seeing them reap the consequences of their self-prostitution.

The death spiral - in the GOP version, the male skater loses his grip and his partner slams into the wall

 

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