http://www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/What_To_Do_When_Your_Party_Sucks.html Remember Gerry Ford’s Republican Party? Remember the mastodon? They roamed the planet at about the same time. Moderate Republicans of yore (some of them were even a bit liberal) stood by (silently) and watched (but also benefitted) as their party was hijacked by the likes of Reagan and Gingrich and DeLay and Bush. Nowadays, though, it ain’t so great a ride anymore...A recent survey showed that amongst Republicans, 59 percent want the party to become more conservative, as opposed to 28 percent who want it to remain where it is, and only 12 percent who prefer to see it move toward the middle. This is an amazing set of statistics. It’s even more amazing when you consider that, among the general population, the party has hit its lowest favorability rating ever, down to 34 percent now, six percent less than a month ago, with 61 percent of the public now holding an unfavorable view of the GOP. And those numbers come directly on the heels of a presidential election cycle, presumably when any party is best able to market itself. They just spent half a billion dollars telling you how great they are, and what their money bought them was a six percent decline in favorability. Ugh. That’s a real bad sign if you’re a political party... When you add in the massive shift among voters toward Democratic Party registrations, it gets even worse. And when you then consider the especially high tendency to abandon the GOP among new young voters, who are likely to keep their affiliations for life, it looks a lot like the China Syndrome of partisan politics – a meltdown so bad it could go right through the Earth’s core and out the other side.
And no wonder. Everything about these guys is wrong. Consider the composition of the Republican Party right now. It houses three major tendencies, with some degree of overlap among them, but also some friction over whose agenda will get the priority attention of the party. First are the fiscal conservatives who, while nevertheless having a mass following for some of their ideas, are basically just Wall Street masters-of-the-universe robber-baron types. They run the party, are always first up to get their policy toys, and always get everything they want, which is pretty much just money. Boatloads of it. Especially yours. John McCain complaining about the idea of redistribution of wealth? You gotta be joking. How did the guy ever keep a straight face? Thirty years ago, the wealthiest ten percent of Americans brought home one-third of the national income each year. Since Reaganism-Bushism came to town, that number has been jacked up to one-half (hey, just like it was in the fun 1920s!). Wanna know where all that money came from? See that empty space in your wallet?
Of course, if people actually ever voted their own interests, the party of ten percent of the population would lose every election in sight. That’s where group two comes in – the social conservatives. These are the really scary monsters among a crowded house full of them. These people long ago turned pro. They tend to be existentially frightened down to their bones, and cling hard to the assurances provided by religion and an ideology which seeks both to block all manner of change and, especially, to keep womenfolk and brown people in their place. Of course, the kleptocrats and their operatives laugh at the Jesus Freaks behind their backs. But never to their face. (You think I’m making this up? Both David Kuo and John DiIulio said so – and they both worked in the Bush White House.) Why should Karl Rove and his ilk pretend to respect the social conservatives? Because these are the shock troops who allow the ten percent to win elections they otherwise never could. And the price is dirt cheap too. When the GOP controlled both Congress and the White House recently, did you notice them outlawing abortion? Mandating school prayer? Criminalizing homosexuality? Nope, nope and nope. They didn’t do squat for the holy rollers, other than appoint justices to the federal bench who are supposed to do all these things, but haven’t either.
Last are the neocons – wee Kid Charlemagnes, one and all – out to conquer the world, or at least all the parts with oil underneath them. Like the plutocrats, the neocons need the storm troopers of the religious right to provide the votes, intimidate the opposition, justify the unjustifiable in the name of our lord, and produce the bulk of the cannon fodder who will march off to war, no questions asked. The religious right is especially useful for the neocons because of the obsession that the holies have adopted toward Israel in the last decades. Sometimes it’s hard to know who’s using whom, since the End Times that the crossketeers have in mind for the circumcised set is not exactly a pretty picture (it has something to do with masses of sinners writhing in pain – before burning in Hell – while all the nice folk float up to heaven to joyfully strum their harps all day and claim their prize of whatever is the Christian equivalent of 72 virgins – 72 guilt-trips for masturbating, perhaps?).
Anyhow, these three groups form the predominant strains of the Republican Party in our era. Because they share in common a mutual preference for jackbooted, S&M style authoritarianism, and because the scared-shitless social conservatives have a compulsive, pathological need to be deceived in every respect, they have kept themselves amazingly disciplined, despite actually having rather separate agendas. There has been some jockeying for legislative priority and some occasional tensions between the camps. By and large, though, the other two camps have so far only needed to throw the religious right the occasional Supreme Court justice to keep them satisfied. That was their absolute bottom line, though. When Bush tried to put up the very-conservative-but-not-conservative-enough Harriet Miers, it was a bridge too far, and his base went all apoplectic on him. That was the end of Harriet, to be sure, but really, that leg of the party – which does all the envelope-licking and church carpool-driving – gets little else from their laughing masters... The smart money figured out months ago which party was going to be ruling Washington in 2009, and since they couldn’t care less which set of minions they buy at any given time, Wall Street investments – er, campaign contributions – have been going to Democrats in record amounts this year. The religious right is actually dividing a bit along generational lines, and the younger cohort is particularly interested in environmental issues, not to mention being, one senses, a bit embarrassed by the sexual obsessions of the Jerry-atric Falwell set. Hard to blame them for that. Meanwhile, many of the neocons – anxious to remain relevant and continue getting talk-show bookings (as if the mainstream media ever found a regressive so wrong on the issues as to deny them a megaphone) have jumped ship somewhat after the debacle of Iraq blew up in their collective faces...
MUCH MORE AT LINK--DAVID MICHAEL GREEN TEARS REPUBLICANS A NEW ONE (AND HE JABS THE DEMOCRATS, TOO)
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