The GOP's Self-Created Chaos

Reactions to Kevin McCarthy's surprise removal of himself from consideration to be the next Speaker of the House continue.  The biggest issues and reflections are (i) who can possibly restore order, if not sanity, to the Republican Party, and (ii) how did the GOP become so insane and out of ouch with reality.  It seems that there is some consensus - at least outside of the GOP - that the party establishment bears responsibility.  Most however, refrain from getting at the real root cause: the empowerment of the Christofascists and evangelical Christians in the Republican Party.  When I resigned from the Virginia Beach City Committee, I stated that until the party once again honored the concept of the separation of church and state, I could not be a member of the GOP.  In the intervening years, things have only gotten worse.  With the rise of white evangelicals and Christian extremists, we have seen the attendant rise and acceptance of racism and white supremacy within the GOP (the "Tea Party" is merely a label to hide the real nature of the insane party base).   What is frightening is that there seems to be no way to stop the metastasizing cancer that these people represent.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's self-destruction as a serious political party.  Here are excerpts:

At this point, I worry we’re going to start finding members of the Republican establishment curled up in their beds, eyes clenched shut and ears covered with trembling hands, moaning “make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.” 

Pity their suffering, but remember that they brought it on themselves.

The insurrection that propelled billionaire Donald Trump into the lead for the GOP nomination and ultimately made House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) surrender his gavel in frustration rages on unabated. This was no mere summer skirmish. If anything, the rebellion is gaining strength.

It is dawning on the party grandees that their most recent predictions of Trump’s demise, like earlier ones, were wrong.

And there is a reason for Trump’s success that goes beyond his skill at burnishing his personal brand: He is saying what much of the GOP base wants to hear. 

The party establishment has only itself to blame. From the moment President Obama took office, Republicans in Congress have been selling the base a bill of goods. They demonized Obamacare and cynically swore to repeal it, knowing they could not. They balked at sensible immigration reform, deciding instead to do nothing. They engaged in Pyrrhic brinkmanship over the budget and the debt ceiling, fully aware that in the end they would have to back down.

Promising to do the impossible was an effective short-term strategy for raising money and winning midterm elections. But if you keep firing up your supporters and letting them down, they become disillusioned. They begin to think the problem might not be Obama and the Democrats. It might be you.

That same dynamic is happening in the House, where Boehner’s decision to walk away has emboldened, not chastened, the ultraconservative revolutionaries in the GOP ranks.

In the Democratic Party, the conflict is ideological — left vs. center-left. In the GOP, the struggle looks existential. 

Put another way, it’s not hard to imagine a party in which there’s room for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and you can easily imagine one supporting the other as standard-bearer. But a tent that can hold, say, both Trump’s view on undocumented immigrants — hunt them down and kick them out — and Bush’s support for compassionate reform? That’s not a political party, it’s a food fight.

The Republican establishment may ultimately find some way to drag one of its presidential candidates through the primaries. But chaos, Trump has shown, is the GOP’s new normal.

The GOP Sinks Deeper into Chaos

As I have said before, the Republican Party has become an insane asylum under the control of the patients, many of who suffer from severe delusions and detachment from objective reality.  With John Boehner's unexpected announcement last month that he was resigning as Speaker of the House of Representatives, many thought that Kevin McCarthy - not one of my favorite people - would succeed Boehner.  Now, McCarthy has thrown the GOP into chaos by his sudden announcement that he would be withdrawing his name from consideration.  Whether McCarthy changed his mind after realizing that he's suffer the same difficulties as Boehner, feeling that his honesty about the true nature of the House Benghazi committee was toxic, or knew that some other bombshell might be forthcoming, his withdrawal has left the lunatic right rejoicing and less insane Republicans fearful of what may yet be to come.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the batshitery reigning supreme in the GOP.  Here are highlights:

Less than a year after a sweeping electoral triumph, Republicans are on the verge of ceasing to function as a national political party.

The most powerful and crippling force at work in the ­once-hierarchical GOP is anger, directed as much at its own leaders as anywhere else.

First, a contingent of several dozen conservative House members effectively forced Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) to resign rather than face a possibly losing battle to hold on to his job. Now they have claimed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), who had been considered the favorite to replace Boehner until he announced Thursday that he is dropping out of the race.

With no obvious replacement for Boehner in sight, “it is total confusion — a banana republic,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). “Any plan, anything you anticipate — who knows what’ll happen? People are crying, they don’t have any idea how this will unfold, at all.”

Parallel currents of rage and chaos have been roiling the 2016 presidential race, diminishing hopes that an eventual nominee can bring order and direction to the increasingly dysfunctional party.

But government experience has become a liability for Republicans, rather than a credential. Celebrity billionaire Donald Trump, the leader in every poll, has rallied the conservative base by mocking the entire GOP establishment as weak and feckless. Many of the other candidates have followed his lead.

The forces that have made the House ungovernable are coming from the same wellspring of insurgency, beginning with the tea party movement, that propelled the Republicans back into control of Congress.

Battalions of conservative ground troops have come to Capitol Hill in the past five years with expectations that were not in line with what could actually be achieved while there is still a Democrat in the White House.

Disappointed in their ability to follow through on their campaign promises to turn back President Obama’s policies, they trained their fire on their own commanders.

For all their gains on the state and local level, Republicans are deepening the problems that have cost them the popular vote in all but one of the last six presidential elections. The divisive and exclusionary rhetoric of their 2016 contenders has hit a chord with primary voters . . . .
but threatens to further alienate key groups of voters in an increasingly diverse country.

Their contempt for compromise has also undermined the Republicans’ drive to prove that they can actually govern.  

Junior members of Congress no longer have to seek the favor of more senior ones to rise through the ranks. Modern media has given them the power to play to a national audience — as presidential contender and first-term senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has demonstrated in the Senate.

In July, Cruz went so far as to call Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a liar on the floor of the Senate. Such a breach of decorum would have been unthinkable in earlier times, but it has burnished Cruz’s image with the conservative base.

At the Obama White House, officials were not gloating at the Republican turmoil — in part, because it could pose problems for carrying out their own agenda. For instance, the president is going to have to rely on a large number of GOP votes to pass a Pacific Rim free-trade deal that is drawing opposition from Obama’s own party.

Candidly, I do not know how the Christofascists and Tea Party (a euphemism in my view for Christofascists and white supremacists) can be brought under control .  They are simply crazy and logic and reason - and objective reality - get nowhere with them.  The GOP establishment allowed them to hijack the party base and now the price may be the ultimate death of the GOP.

America's Looming GOP Freak Show

If some of the predictions for the 2014 midterm elections prove right and the GOP captures the U.S. Senate, Congressional Republicans will have to live up to the job of governing.  These later expectations are about as realistic as expectations that there will be a major change in the Catholic Church towards gays.  They are a nice fantasy, but do not expect them to actually occur.  Not with the GOP base controlled by spittle flecked Christofascists, white supremacists and other nasty elements of the under belly of society.  A piece in Salon looks at the more likely freak show that Americans will witness which hopefully make sane elements of the voting public think twice about voting Republican come 2016.  Here are highlights:

[T]he case rapidly picking up steam that another midterm loss will be good for Democrats is both silly and a little dangerous. . . . those takes rely at least in part on the notion that if Republicans gain the Senate, they’ll either have an incentive to help “govern” – or they’ll shame themselves in the eyes of the American public if they don’t. Unfortunately, neither premise is true.

Bill Scher reprised his Politico argument on MSNBC’s “Up with Steve” on Saturday, continuing to press the case that Republicans will suffer politically “if they look like a completely dysfunctional party incapable of governing.” (Scher, unlike Seib, holds out no false hope that the GOP will get its act together and compromise with Obama if it wins back the Senate.)

But Republicans already look like a completely dysfunctional party incapable of governing, and they’re on the verge of another great midterm win. A year after the government shutdown, it’s shocking even to me how little it ultimately cost the party politically. Everyone knew that October 2013 polls weren’t as important as October 2014, and that the GOP would have a year to recover – but even I didn’t believe that they would, so completely.

The Republican base is more than content to have its leaders do nothing but block and sabotage Obama. And the Democratic base still disproportionately sits out the midterms, which lets the obstructionists dominate the agenda.Seib holds out hope that a GOP Senate might be able to deliver on immigration reform. Continued Beltway optimism about that prospect is delusional.

There’s no doubt 2016 will be much better for Democrats. The base turns out for presidential elections, and the Senate map that year will be as tough on Republicans as it is in 2014 on Democrats, forcing the GOP to defend more seats and offering their rivals more pickups. All of that is a given.

But even a 2016 rout is unlikely to force Republicans to focus on a policy agenda and commit to governing again. All they have to do is thwart the plans of President Hillary Clinton, or whomever, and reap the rewards two years later.

Until the Democrats’ structural disadvantage in voter turnout is corrected, American politics is an endless feedback loop of futility: little or no policy change leads to a discouraged electorate, which ensures little or no policy change, which guarantees more voter apathy. Democrats may yet keep the Senate, and if they do it will come down to greater grassroots and national emphasis on turning out unmarried women voters (more on that later this week). But if they don’t, there will be no silver lining.

Sure, it will be entertaining to watch de facto House Speaker Ted Cruz make life even more miserable for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s a given that the 2016 Republican primary race will be as big a freak show as 2012 (and maybe even with Mitt Romney again too!) But this optimist no longer believes the GOP will pay any lasting price for more cartoonish dysfunction. But the rest of us will, for a long time.

I agree with the author.  I am also starting to believe that a majority of Americans are idiots and that perhaps just maybe they deserve the government they get, especially the Democrats who sit on their asses during the midterms.  That. of course, doesn't make watching the circus any easier for the rest of us.