GOP Elites in Full Blown Panic Mode

The damage being done to the Republican brand continues unabated as the lunatic Christofascist/Tea Party controlled base of the GOP veers further and further off into extremism and what is basically a fantasy world.  A fantasy world that a majority of Americans tethered to reality do not inhabit - and most importantly reject. As a former Republican who left the GOP as it sold its soul to the Christofascists, I will admit that I get some perverse delight in seeing my warnings to former GOP compatriots come true.  Unfortunately, the GOP has now become a threat to America and the party base seemingly would savor destroying the American (and world) economy.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the apparent panic gripping those who allowed the lunatic fringe to take over the party grassroots.  Here are excerpts:

Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei are well sourced among top Republicans. And today they weigh in with a big piece reporting that GOP elites are in full blown panic mode about the party’s drift towards a series of Apocalyptic showdowns this fall.

The most interesting bit is the profound worry about the drift towards a government shutdown over Obamacare. But I think the fundamental problem is still being overlooked. Here’s the key part:

Republicans are in jeopardy of convincing voters they simply cannot govern. Their favorable ratings are terrible and getting worse. But there is broad concern it could go from worse to an unmitigated disaster this fall. Most urgently, according to a slew of key Republicans we interviewed, conservative GOP senators have got to give up their insistence that the party allow the government to shut down after Sept. 30 if they don’t get their way on defunding Obamacare.

The quixotic drive — led by Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee — is part of Rubio’s effort to make up with the conservative base after he was stunned by the backlash over his deal-making on immigration. Pollsters say the funding fight makes Republicans look even more obstructionist, and causes voters to worry about the effect a shutdown would have on their own finances.

Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research, who has been drilling down on this issue for the conservative public-opinion group Resurgent Republic, said: “Shutting down the government is the one way that Republicans can turn Obamacare from a political advantage to a political disadvantage in 2014.”

The government shutdown push has focused the attention of GOP elites, because it is probably suicidal politically for the party. At the same time, though, the unspoken premise is that the problem is only one of excessive tactics, rather than something more fundamental. If Republicans are in jeopardy of convincing voters they cannot govern, as top GOPers seem to fear, it’s not clear that this is only because a shutdown has become a real possibility.

A shutdown, because of its visibility and destructiveness, is obviously a glaring symbol of an inability to govern, one that voters (as the 1990s showed) easily understand in such terms. But the result of the relentless focus on the shutdown has been to quasi-normalize other opposition to Obamacare. If a shutdown risks conveying a fundamental inability to govern, why do not other efforts to sabotage the law . . . . while offering no alternative also convey the same?

Some Republicans have begun to acknowledge this larger problem in public, albeit in somewhat different terms. But the battle over the shutdown is distracting from the need to focus on that more basic challenge.