The GOP - the Time Loop Party

If one watches and listens to the Republican presidential candidates, you can close your eyes and in many respects what you hear being said bears little difference from what one heard 36 years ago.  Other than tax rates, the goal is to return to the 1950's or perhaps early 1960's before the country began to rapidly change with both the sexual revolution and the acceleration of a much more diverse demographics.  That world is gone forever, yet the GOP continues to cling to the same mantras that have been proven wrong by experience and objective fact over and over ago.  A column in the New York Times looks at this disconnect from reality which seemingly is only getting worse as the GOP increasingly looks as if it is one huge insane asylum.  Here are column excerpts:

By now everyone who follows politics knows about Marco Rubio’s software-glitch performance in Saturday’s Republican debate. . . . .  Not only did he respond to a challenge from Chris Christie about his lack of achievements by repeating, verbatim, the same line from his stump speech he had used a moment earlier; when Mr. Christie mocked his canned delivery, he repeated the same line yet again.

In other news, last week — on Groundhog Day, to be precise — Republicans in the House of Representatives cast what everyone knew was a purely symbolic, substance-free vote to repeal Obamacare. It was the 63rd time they’ve done so.

Mr. Rubio’s inability to do anything besides repeat canned talking points was startling. Worse, it was funny, which means that it has gone viral. And it reinforced the narrative that he is nothing but an empty suit. But really, isn’t everyone in his party doing pretty much the same thing, if not so conspicuously?

The truth is that the whole G.O.P. seems stuck in a time loop, saying and doing the same things over and over. And unlike Bill Murray’s character in the movie “Groundhog Day,” Republicans show no sign of learning anything from experience.

Think about the doctrines every Republican politician now needs to endorse, on pain of excommunication.

First, there’s the ritual denunciation of Obamacare as a terrible, very bad, no good, job-killing law. Did I mention that it kills jobs? Strange to say, this line hasn’t changed at all despite the fact that we’ve gained 5.7 million private-sector jobs since January 2014, which is when the Affordable Care Act went into full effect.

Then there’s the assertion that taxing the rich has terrible effects on economic growth, and conversely that tax cuts at the top can be counted on to produce an economic miracle.

This doctrine was tested more than two decades ago, when Bill Clinton raised tax rates on high incomes; Republicans predicted disaster, but what we got was the economy’s best run since the 1960s.

Oh, and there’s also the spectacular failure of the Kansas experiment, where huge tax cuts have created a budget crisis without delivering any hint of the promised economic miracle.

But Republican faith in tax cuts as a universal economic elixir has, if anything, grown stronger, with Mr. Rubio, in particular, going even further than the other candidates by promising to eliminate all taxes on capital gains.

Meanwhile, on foreign policy the required G.O.P. position has become one of utter confidence in the effectiveness of military force. How did that work in Iraq? Never mind: The only reason anybody in the world fails to do exactly what America wants must be because our leadership is lily-livered if not treasonous. And diplomacy, no matter how successful, is denounced as appeasement.

So how did this happen to the G.O.P.? In a direct sense, I suspect that it has a lot to do with Foxification, the way Republican primary voters live in a media bubble into which awkward facts can’t penetrate. But there must be deeper causes behind the creation of that bubble. 

[Rubio] he wasn’t the only person on that stage spouting canned talking points that are divorced from reality. They all were, even if the other candidates managed to avoid repeating themselves word for word.

As I note repeatedly, one of the deeper causes of the descent of the GOP into insanity is the party's embrace of the Christofascists - who are by definition living utterly detached from reality.  That sickness has now spread across the GOP as sane and rational people have fled the party and ugly elements such as white supremacists have replaced them. 

Republicans Are Stuck in a Reagan Time Warp

Even as the Republicans appear poised to possibly win control of the U.S. Senate, in the longer view, the future does not look good for the GOP, particularly with aging whites comprising less and less of the overall population.  The party base is shrinking and, worse yet, the party remains in a time warp where nothing has seemingly changed since 1980 even thought the world has moved on in many, many ways.  The result?  2014 may be a last hurrah for the GOP.  Conservative columnist Michael Gerson  looks at the GOP troubling inability to move forward in time.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

The Republican debate about the shape of the political future has begun, typically for conservatives, as a fight about the past. As President Obama has become a ­Jimmy Carter-like figure — hapless, luckless and increasingly friendless — most prospective GOP presidential candidates are positioning themselves as Ronald Reagan’s rightful heir. A thick fog of historical analogy has settled over the Republican field. 

“It took Jimmy Carter to give us Ronald Reagan,” argues Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who clearly sees (and admires) a resemblance to the latter in the mirror each morning. “I’m a great believer in Ronald Reagan,” claims Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), even while proposing a Carthage-like destruction of Reagan’s foreign policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has called Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) “the son of Ronald Reagan when it comes to national security” — though Rubio is actually young enough to be Reagan’s great-grandson.

The squabble over this inheritance is recounted in a recent essay by Henry Olsen and Peter Wehner . . . . They warn, however, that “the constant invocation of Reagan’s name to bolster arguments for present-day policies (and present-day politicians) actually hinders our understanding of the substance of Reagan’s legacy — and undermines the Republican Party’s ability to make a case for itself in the here-and-now.” 

It is Republicans who now struggle in the shade of presidential greatness, even when they win congressional elections. 

Olsen and Wehner point to two serious risks in seeking “a posthumous seal of approval” from Reagan. First, there is the consistent temptation of all idolatry — to craft a figure in our own image. Those who claim Reagan as the first and purest tea party leader find support not in history but in mythology. 

In fact, Reagan’s presidency represented an accommodation of the theory of the New Deal and the Great Society (the existence and constitutionality of Social Security and Medicare), coupled with a strong objection to the coercive, uniform and bureaucratic methods of modern liberalism. On economic policy, Reagan was deeply committed to cutting marginal tax rates but willing to accept tax increases in other areas. He operated, according to Olsen and Wehner, “within the four corners of reality.” He was “more a Burkean conservative than a Jacobin.” The authors diagnose a second risk of Republican claims to be the vicar of Reagan.

The authors diagnose a second risk of Republican claims to be the vicar of Reagan. This strategy is employed as a conversation-stopper: Reagan said it; I believe it; that settles it. But this produces a Republican policy debate encased in amber. “Some of his epigones,” argue Olsen and Wehner, “today appear caught in a time warp, acting as if every year is 1980. Reagan, while conservative to the bone, would never have allowed himself to become captive to the past.

This is a lesson that is particularly urgent for newly elected Republicans and prospective presidential candidates. A party truly animated by the spirit of Reagan will address the problems of our time, not of his.

Don't expect the GOP to follow this last advice.  The party base is lost in insanity, religious extremism and a desire to bring back racial segregation.   Meanwhile, the GOP elected officials fall all over themselves to prostitute themselves to the ever more ugly party base.  The downward spiral continues.