The Daily Dish--self-destructing GOP

[ginnyinWI]

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/meep-meep-ctd.html

I think the "meep-meep" reference is Obama outwitting them just like the Roadrunner. Fun read.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Brace yourself

A lot of DU is convinced that the Democratic Party is now headed for disaster because of the health reform bill. There will be posts stating that position and attacking you for your posts, and they will be nasty.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. The propositions are not mutually exclusive

Sullivan is right. To put it in other words, there is nothing uglier than right wing populism. It seeks to exclude the "out" groups based on commonly held prejudices rather than reason. Conservatism, properly speaking, is an elitist ideology that eschews the very mob rule that many GOP leaders have embraced. Speaking of reason, a progressive populist is of the idea that the common man is capable of reason, while right wing populists such as Sarah Palin are of the view that reason itself is little more than an elitist air and that something called "common sense" is sufficient. A left wing populism when speaking contemptuously of the elite, is talking about rich people who use their money to corrupt the democratic process; a right wing populist thinks of an elitist as somebody who uses his education.

It is noteworthy that Ms. Palin, while expressing that thought in very similar words, possesses very little of what most intelligent people would recognize as common sense. This is true of most right wing populists, or "teabaggers" as we like to call them these days or "know-nothings" as they were known a century and a half ago.

Nevertheless, while the teabaggers shrink the once big GOP tent into a pup tent, the Democratic Party is becoming a tent that is too big. A political faction that claims to stand for everything is, in fact, standing for nothing and probably paralyzed on top of it. It will fall apart, just as the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party did after the election of 1824 following a period virtual one-party rule. So the left and centrist Democrats could part ways opening a new two-party dynamic that is center-left rather than center-right.