The Shrinking Tent of the GOP's Policies of Obstruction

I don't much like columnist Jennifer Rubin, but in a column in the Washington Post she a kick in the ass litany of what's wrong with today's Republican Party and its fantasy world that we are still living in the 1980's and that all the GOP needs to do is fix its "messaging problem."  The reality is that the world and the country have changed and are continuing to change yet the GOP base - especially the reality denying Christofascists - simply do not get that message.  She candidly states that the GOP needs to change or die.  Candidly, I am not going to hold my breath and expect that to happen any time soon.  The party grass roots has become an insane asylum where acceptance of reality simply isn't on the agenda.  Here are column highlights:

If the GOP can’t win elections and win adherents, it is headed for the ash heap of history.

The right is not divided into moderates and conservatives, as a smart pollster told me, but between those who can count and those who cannot. If conservatives do not attract larger numbers in the fastest-growing parts of the electorate, they will not win elections, their agenda will become a dusty artifact on the shelf and the country will slide further into decline.

Those who say that the right needs only to be more articulate and more forceful in defense of the exact same agenda are kidding themselves. Those who say they can’t find common ground with gay conservatives who believe in capitalism, Second Amendment rights, and federalism are harming the movement, the party, and the country. Those who refuse to recognize that we will not deport 11 million immigrants who came here illegally are in Never Never Land and are defending a lawless system, not the “rule of law.”

It is also time to stop complaining about the left and the voters. Conservatives sound too whiny; victimhood is unappealing. They need to be forward-looking, optimistic and practical. It is not enough to be against Obamacare. They must be for market-based health-care reform. It is insufficient to be against excessive spending. They must be for entitlement and tax reform. It’s not enough to rail against the breakdown of the family. They must be for policies that encourage and sustain marriage and make child rearing easier and less costly. It’s not going to work just to inveigh against teachers unions; conservatives have to enact school reform including school choice.
It is time to get out of the 1980s and into the 21st century.

CPAC should pass out some writings of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. They were practical and prudent, and they understood that we cannot remake our fellow citizens or reinvent their habits and inclinations. 

The leaders of CPAC and many in the conservative movement have lost track of that. They are creatures of the 1980s, when our problems, our country and the world were different. They became so adept at the politics of the 1980s that they never left that decade.