The GOP's Frankenstein Monster

As the post mortems continue in the wake of Eric Cantor's primary defeat on Tuesday, many excuses are being made - e.g., Cantor lost touch with his constituents - that try to avoid the fundamental reason that Cantor lost:  the GOP is now the party of unreason and extremism.  The GOP that many of us grew up with simply no longer exists.  What killed it?  The Christofascists, both those who parade around as "family values" advocates and those who hide under the Tea Party label.  Even when not winning primaries such as the one that sealed Cantor's fate, the truth is that what now passes as "moderate" positions are far to the right of what the GOP once stood for.  Religious fanaticism and thinly veiled white supremacist positions were once not mainstream GOP values. And most certainly, the proud rejection of knowledge and reason were not GOP values as I was growing up in a family of Republicans.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the  slow death of the GOP at the hands of its self-created Frankenstein monster.  Here are excepts:

The Republican Party’s reliance on tea party support is like an addict’s dependence on a dangerous drug: It may feel good at first, but eventually it eats you alive.

No House majority leader had ever been ousted in a primary before Eric Cantor’s shocking defeat on Tuesday. Republicans who tell themselves it was Cantor’s own fault — he lost touch with his Virginia district, he tried to have it both ways on immigration, he came to be seen as part of the Washington establishment — are whistling past the graveyard.

[A] powerful incumbent, running in a district whose boundaries were custom-designed for his benefit, lost by an incredible 11 percentage points.

There can be no doubt that the tail is now wagging the dog. The tea party should no longer be thought of as just a faction of the GOP. It’s calling the shots.

Certainly, other Republican incumbents have managed to survive this primary season, with the possible exception of Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who is thought likely to lose a runoff against tea-party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel. But many establishment Republicans have hung on by claiming the tea party’s radical vision as their own.

Brat believes in fiscal restraint, which is a standard Republican position — until it veers into nihilistic territory such as refusing to raise the debt ceiling, as most tea party Republicans in the House have consistently voted. He questions the federal role in setting education policy — at a time when U.S. schools, by almost any measure, are falling behind.

Brat also opposes comprehensive immigration reform that could provide a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million men, women and children who are in the United States without papers. This is the issue that brought conservative radio talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin to endorse and campaign for him.

Republican intransigence on reform threatens to make Latinos — the biggest minority group in the nation — a longtime loyal constituency of the Democratic Party. If this happens, simple arithmetic makes it hard to imagine how Republicans will be able to compete in national elections.

In other words, the tea party is pushing the GOP toward ideological purity and electoral marginalization. Smart Republicans don’t want to walk off the cliff. But deviating from the tea party path, as Cantor did, can mean being sent home.

The GOP has to decide whether it intends to participate responsibly in the enterprise of government or stand on the sidelines, shouting invective and throwing stones. One of which just hit the majority leader of the House of Representatives in the head.

 The GOP of old is dead and gone.  I do not see how it can be saved from the monster that the "GOP establishment" allowed to infect the party.