The Republican Party Is On the Verge of Total Destruction

[berni_mccoy]

The battle being exposed and quite frankly, AIRED PUBLICLY in the form of exposing Palin as a ineffectual idiot. This is not just a finger-pointing campaign to excuse the failure. The fact is, McCain's career is over and he has no real reason to do this. No, this attack comes from the party. And it's more than just the "she didn't know Africa is a continent" story. Their performing a full-blown investigation of her expense accounts (the 150K+ clothing expense). No, this is a battle between, not just two groups, but THREE groups in the GOP:

1. The first group represents the Republicans who were excited by Palin and wanted her to be the TOP of the ticket. She no doubt energized the conservative base and she totally represents the extreme fundamental Christian conservative wing of the Republican party. She could draw crowds. She was popular. She brings new blood to a very aged party.

2. The second group represents the more true Republican party, the older generation, the group that doesn't necessarily agree with Bush's policies and who allowed the neocons to take over and run the party. This group is more open to not having abortion be a party platform and truly believes in conservative spending practices and minimal taxation and a much more conservative approach to foreign policy (for example, perhaps a nice bombing campaign to back up the enforcement of a sanction, but in no way condoning the occupation of a country like Iraq). This group is epitomized by people like Ron Paul and even Bush Sr.

3. The third group are the neocons, the greediest group of people on the face of the earth. They are in government for one reason and one reason only: money. They manipulate policy and legislation to fund the companies that either give them kickbacks or for which they are directly invested. If an occupation feeds their groups money, then they are more than happy to craft intelligence and build the case for the other two groups to justify it. They in turn, will convince each of their bases, just as they did for Iraq. Dick Cheney is the poster child for this group. Newt Gingrich was an architect of this groups rise to financial power.

These three groups have banded together over the last 10 years to feed their hunger for power and ramrod their agenda down the American people's throat. The neocons and the old-school Republicans used the fundamentalists to divide America on issues of religion, tradition and sexual orientation. The old school thought they were getting power and position out of the deal. The fundamentalists thought they were getting a new Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and a deeper rooting for fundamentalist Christian groups in the federal government. The neocons were the only group to actually get what they wanted.

And now, you see the face of group one, Sarah Palin, being soundly attacked by the other two. Why? Because there is no way those two groups will allow her to be the next president. The old school GOP and the neocons never had any intention of giving the fundamentalists what they wanted. The fundamentalists just haven't realized that yet. However, the fundamentalists have been the largest growing population of the republican party, while the other two groups diminished as the party slowly disaffected them. The other two simply can't pull together a platform or a set of policies that will be sellable to the American people. Not now and not for anytime to come. The people have been enabled and empowered to see past their deceit with the power of information exchange via the Internet. Even the MSM is not abel to overcome this.

The fundamentalists won't go quietly away. They will find a way to exact their vengeance for the recent vicious attacks on their representative Palin by the other two groups. And they will divide them as the reasons for failure and time in the wilderness further thin out the ranks of the party. As the battle gets bloody, you'll see the old-school tire of the war and want to withdraw further into the wilderness. The neocons will likely survive the fight. But the thing is, they haven't had to survive in the wilderness and Mother Nature is no friend of theirs. The ultimate end is that they will perish searching for the food they just can't see for the poison.

[Danger Mouse]

1. The fundamentalists will never be able to present a viable candidate for president.

[Recursion]

9. I'm not sure. Huckabee could have won, I think.

Ironically, the "fundie" candidate couldn't make it through the GOP primaries, but would have probably ended up doing better than McCain.

[KittyWampus]

17. Keep in mind, evangelicals are themselves becoming more liberal and progressive

Fundies are a shrinking group.

[Recursion]

21. I've been pushing for DU to distinguish fundies and evangelicals for a while

I keep saying, "evangelicals, like Jimmy Carter"...

Then when I start distinguishing between dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists, eyes glaze over...

[Danger Mouse]

25. I'm talking about hardcore rightwing fundie lunatics.

[codjh9]

2. Excellent post. My brother is one of those crazy fundamentalists, and although what I'm about to

say doesn't describe him, I just want to add that a fair number of fundamentalists are pretty greedy as well, although they're in a different league (well, most of them anyway) than the neocons.

I can only hope that the Republicans' divisiveness keeps them befuddled - and worse - for quite a while. The Dem Party isn't totally cohesive either, but I think is more so than the Repubs.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Here's my version:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7807823

No good can come from letting her run loose in the imaginations of the droolers.

She's not only an idiot, but is an unmanageable idiot. She wouldn't let them prep her for the Couric interview. She tried to take over the campaign. She's dumb as a rock and too dumb to know it. She has a narcissistic personality disorder. She would be an impossible candidate, and wouldn't take direction once in power. Bush was just about as dumb, but he didn't come with the Igloo Trash persona, and he took direction. He was a reasonable figurehead; she would not be. They don't want her; she's useless, and I bet McCain had buyer's remorse by the second week.

What they're really scared of, though, is that the fundie social conservatives, most of whom have IQ's no higher than Sarah's, could get off the reservation, line up behind her, and take over the Party in 2012. There is no good outcome scenario for that mess. Most likely, a Palin run would crash at the end of the runway; even worse, if she won, she would be clueless and ineducable.

So the Repugs are gonna investigate her Neiman Marcus sprees. They'll probly be up there digging in the tundra, panning for political slime like a bunch of 1898 Cheechakos after gold. They don't care about the $150 K or whatever the final bill turns out to be. They want to make her politicallly radioactive right now!

[Lars39]

15. Bet they expose who really built her house.

[Jackpine Radical]

29. Oh, yeah, that'll be juicy. So reminiscent of the Stevens scandal.

Bet there are connections all over the place.

[EconomicLiberal]

4. Absurd.

The two parties are not going anywhere. While the Republicans are heading towards a very rough patch, they are certainly not on the verge of total destruction.

I heard the same thing about the Democratic Party in the 80s. Eventually it recovered and bounced back (in the 90s).

[Rebellious Republican]

26. Don't be so sure, I defected years ago, and I am not the only one!

When I left the party it was just a slow trickle, it is happening in droves now, I personally know many that have had it with the GOP.

:shrug:

[Elidor]

5. Rumors of their demise are greatly exaggerated

Though that is a lovely run-down on the divisions within the GOP. But don't forget: it's a Zombie Party. Every year it gets back up and puts itself back together. Their hate for eachother is overcome by their hate for us.

Half the world hates what half the world does every day

Though their polarity has been temporarily switched, their revulsions now internal like the repulsion of sub-atomic particles, their hate binds them together after they've cooled down. Gee, that was a really tortured analogy, wasn't it? Haha.

[LittleClarkie]

6. Locat conservative radio person thinks Palin is the antidote to what is wrong with the Repubs

I hope she continues to think so. She says she will refuse to let anyone blame Sarah for this loss.

I personally talked to more than one person who said they normally lean Republican but that Palin scared them into the Obama camp.

She was red meat for the Republican base, but scared the crap out of moderates, independents and many undecideds.

I hope the party does think they should hang their hat on her star. That would be a good thing for us, I think.

[nickinSTL]

7. While I certainly hope they'll rip themselves apart...

I'm not holding my breath.

No question they're in for a rough patch, the various factions vying for power - but I expect that they'll manage to get their crap together...eventually.

I'd love to see the party splinter - but, as I said, I'm not holding my breath.

[slutticus]

8. I would say freepers comprise mostly of group # 1.

I have a buddy from grad school that sounds like group #2.

[Guaranteed]

10. I think it's the Romney folks. nt

[sfam]

11. I think the fundementalists will splinter. Huckabee will be the cause...

Huckabee has a much wider set of issues he cares about, including poor people, environmental issues AND the normal wingnut issues. He will peal off a good bit of the fundamentalists from the Wall Street republicans with his populist poor people spin.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

12. Very nice summation. Where it goes, I have no idea. There are so many fundies and neocons...

Maybe the dems can become the fiscally responsible/tax cutters or the party of adult foreign policy and attract some of that group.

The train wreck we are witnessing is quite astonishing.

[yardwork]

14. The Democrats have been the fiscally responsible/tax cutters AND the party of adult foreign policy.

Made no difference. The neo-con corporatists own the media and the message. Look what they did to Bill Clinton. He was a fiscal conservative with an excellent foreign policy by U.S. standards.

[yardwork]

13. That's a good summary but it leaves out something crucial, making it overly rosy, imo.

The fundamental problem with our country is its history of imperialism premised on a bizarre idea that we are favored by God. That's given rise to the kind of capitalism that Naomi Klein talks about in her book the Shock Doctrine. Our country was and is fueled by slavery, oppression, torture, genocide, predatory monopolies, and imperialism. The descriptor "neocon" is just the latest incarnation of it. Bush Sr. is a neocon, as was his father, his grandfather, his father- and grandfathers-in-law, all the way back. They've always used useful tools to achieve their agendas. The religious right and the old-timy nostalgic Republicans are just the latest versions.

The capitalist neo-cons never go away - they just evolve into new forms. Maybe they'll lose power when our empire fades, as all empires do.

[totodeinhere]

16. I have mixed feelings about that. We should not be a one party state.

So even though I'm a Democrat, I do want there to be an opposition party. You might say, let the GOP self destruct, and then we can see another party emerge. But I don't think that will happen either. I think the GOP will eventually get their act together. Remember that a lot of people wrote them off after Johnson's 48 state landslide over Goldwater in 1964, but in spite of that, four years later the GOP was back in the White House.

[unblock]

18. whatever happens in the short run, they will soon enough make irresponsible greed fashionable again.

they just need to come up with a new cover story. history shows people will fall for cover stories for naked greed again and again and again.

[gravity]

19. If we reach out to group 2, it will be the end of the GOP

Let the sane republicans have a role in working with Obama and the democratic policies in congress. It will help us keep our own policies in check, and most importantly, the democrats will take control over the center of the country. Checkmate

[Beetwasher]

20. Put Palin's Ties To The AIP In Perspective W/ You're Theory

She represents a VERY radical portion of the right theocratic fringe and associates pretty closely w/ them. This split my in fact exacerbate those elements and they may really push more "stridently" for secession to create their own little fundy state up in AK.

Look at the corruption now being uncovered in regards to the vote in this election. It seems there may be ten's of thousands of missing votes in AK (see Kpetes thread). They probably can't afford allow any Dems into power to see what's really going on up there. It will be interesting to see what happens should a Dem AG look into massive election fraud up in AK.

[DCBob]

22. Totally agree. This has been progressing since 2006 and

looks to be getting worse by the day. I really do not see how they can recover any time soon.

[Warren DeMontague]

23. The fundies think that everyone is as nuts as they are. If Palin would have been allowed to come out

and tell the nation the "good news" about how Jesus rode around on a dinosaur, they reason, McCain would have won.

[underpants]

24. Great post-they have lost control of their message hierarchy

Their people are supposed to be told what to talk about and how to talk about it
This comes from Norquist and is disseminated through talk radio/Drudge-->politico.com-->Fox News ---> MSM follows or at least mentions it
We saw the beginning of this tearing down with the illegal immigration "issue"-it was supposed to be another endless unresolved topic like guns and abortion and taxes but suddenly something happened after 2004 that no one expected, they got off the couch to do something other than just vote. They are never encouraged to volunteer or even participate in government, government is BAD (plus it enforces equality but that is another issue). No one expected them to go stand on the border. They lost control of a keeper of an issue which is why you haven't heard a peep about it in the campaigns. PLUS it highlights the two interests they take advantage of but can't let meet-scared whites and business. "Illegals" are not trained as we are, there is an active labor movement or party in every country except ours...basically they could unionize and they have spent tons of time and money to kill organized labor.

Your point about the fundies is spot on. Rove realized that they got killed on the ground in 2000 so he nourished the fundie crowd. Not only did it give the perception of "values" (all that nonsense) they also could do it on the cheap. Bush had the Pastor Ted's into the Oval Office (clearly a violation of several laws) not one-on-one but in groups of 6 or 8 and gave them pens (or pins). Almost no cost. The preachers returned to their megachurches, while not officially endorsing anyone they told their flocks about the access they had directly to Bush (this made the crowd think THEY were only two degrees away from the top) holding up a nothing giftshop pen that they had received in the Oval office. Rove and Bush joked about the free labor and word of mouth they were getting. DiIulio's assistant at the Faith Based office wrote a book detailing just this.

[Chef Eric]

27. I'm not convinced there's much difference between groups 1 & 2.

At the very least, there are some dangerously influential people who are part of both groups. Pseudo-intellectual Bill Kristol comes to mind. Also, Erik Prince of Blackwater is reputed to have been an early Palin supporter.

[Rebellious Republican]

30. Your confused....

Eric Prince falls into more of the 1 and 3 catagory....

Erik Prince is a multi-millionaire fundamentalist Christian from a powerful Michigan Republican family. His wealth came from his father, Edgar Prince, who headed Prince Automotive, an auto parts and machinery manufacturer.
http://www.nndb.com/people/926/000117575/

He was an intern in the White House under President George H. W. Bush<8> and subsequently criticized that administration's policies to the Grand Rapids Press, saying: "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with—homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills."<9> He also served as an intern to California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. While at Hillsdale, Prince campaigned for presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, and interned at Gary Bauer's Family Research Council.<10>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Prince

Kristol is pure Neocon (catagory 3), not many wealthy Jews subscribe to Fundie beliefs...

Kristol was born into a Jewish family; his father Irving Kristol served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine and is considered by some as the father of neoconservatism; his mother Gertrude Himmelfarb was a scholar of Victorian era literature. He graduated in 1970 from The Collegiate School, a preparatory school for boys located in Manhattan.

In the first of what would become legendary strategy memos circulated among Republican policymakers, Kristol said the party should "kill", not amend or compromise on, the Clinton health care plan. The success of the Clinton proposal, he warned, would "re-legitimize middle-class dependence for 'security' on government spending and regulation", and "revive ... the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests." Kristol's memo immediately became important in uniting Republicans behind total opposition to Clinton's reform plan. A later memo advocated the phrase "There is no health care crisis," which Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole used in his response to Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kristol

William Kristol, the son of neoconservative progenitor Irving Kristol, has been an influential voice in Washington politics pushing for aggressive, militaristic U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East and other regions of the world. An unapologetic supporter of the Iraq War and editor of the Weekly Standard, widely considered the preeminent publication of contemporary neoconservatism, Kristol was added in late December 2007 to the New York Times’ roster of op-ed columnists.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1254.html


This would be group 2....

In the politics of the United States of America, the Rockefeller Republicans were a faction of Republicans who held liberal views similar to those of the late Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979), governor of New York from 1959 to 1974 and Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford from 1974 to 1977.

The "Rockefeller Republican" label is sometimes applied to such modern-day politicians as Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. Another is former Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a liberal in cultural as well as international respects, but generally "pro-business" in terms of economic policy. The departure of U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords from the Republican party in 2001 dramatized the still-existing tension between the "Rockefeller wing" of the party and what is today its generally more influential socially-conservative wing. The 2006 elections saw the defeat of many moderate Republicans such as Lincoln Chafee, Rob Simmons of Connecticut, Charlie Bass of New Hampshire and Jim Leach of Iowa saw the prominence of Rockefeller Republicans dwindle even further.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican

:shrug:

[Chef Eric]

32. Nope, I'm not confused... I just didn't proofread my reply.

What I meant is that there is an overlap between 1 and 3. I am aware who Bill Kristol is, and I know he is a neo-con. He ALSO was one of Palin's earliest and strongest supporters, and he continues to defend his support of her. That was the point I was trying to make. I wish we could just say that these categories are separate, because that would mean that the Republicans are even weaker than the currently seem to be. Unfortunately, that is being very simplistic.

[Rebellious Republican]

33. That I can agree with, N/T

:toast:

[bulloney]

28. The Republican party had too many power-grabbing factions to be sustainable.

There's the neo-con faction. There's the religious right. Then, there are the true conservatives who actually believe in smaller government, smaller budgets and power from the grassroots level instead of the top. This combination made it impossible to avoid the big crash that we're seeing now.

[ladjf]

31. It appears that the "Religious Right" is rapidly losing it's influence

on National elections. nt