When did the GOP jump the shark?

[Archae]

During the 1920's, when any talk of regulation was shouted down, leading to Black Friday in 1929, and the Great Depression?

During the 1930's, when some republicans were openly Nazi sympathizers, and others willingly did business with Nazis?

During the 1950's, when the GOP was the party of McCarthy?

During the 1960's, when the GOP willingly took in Dixiecrats, and then became the party of Nixon?

During the 1970's, when they sat back and licked their Nixon-inflicted wounds?

During the 1980's, when they became the party of "Christian" theocrats like Jerry Falwell?

During the 1990's, when they pulled a power grab in the guise of a "Contract With America" that brought hypocrite, liar and crook Newt Gingrich to power?

During the 2000's, when they were the party of Bush, Cheney and the rest of the goon squads?

Now, when they are the party of childish, infantile tantrums?

[jgraz]

1. You've got it wrong. They ARE the shark.

With frickin LASER BEAMS.

[SoFlaJet]

2. Ooh ooh ooh Mister Kot-tear, ooh ooh ooh

I know exactly when, two words Hurricane. Katrina. NOTHING they have done since has worked. It's almost like the Big Guy Upstairs said enough! You've HAD your chance.

[Barack_America]

6. Excellent point.

[SoFlaJet]

8. right after Katrina

Bush went around the country and tried to sell his idea to privatize Social Security by using the stock market-nobody listened, they cancelled the tour and the stock market crashed. It seems the American people had had enough of these idiots. When you allow this country's citizens to die in the streets and float by on camera the message starts getting through about how they feel about most of us-you know, those of us who DIDN'T get the Bush tax cuts.

[tridim]

16. Was Terri Shaivo before or after Katrina?

I think that was a big part of it too.

[kentuck]

3. Excellent question!

I cannot pinpoint the exact time but it would have been when they decided that they had to lie and deceive their followers in order to compete with the other Party. They took Lincoln literally. You can fool some of people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all of the time....

[bushisanidiot]

4. Their constituants will keep voting them in as long as they keep

the national discussion on gays, abortion, and guns.

[hedgehog]

5. In 1876, when they threw the freed slaves to the KKK in return

for putting Rutherford Hayes into the White House.

[asdjrocky]

7. Bingo!

[elocs]

9. They are really hanging on very well for jumping the shark decades ago.

My guess is that they will be around for decades longer and we underestimate them at our peril.

[MineralMan]

10. When did they not?

[S_E_Fudd]

11. 1876...when they abandoned Reconstruction...

So they could keep the White House

[jmowreader]

12. January 21, 1909

The Republicans have had two great presidents and one very good one. The great presidents were Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt--who would both be Democrats if they were alive today. Roosevelt was more liberal than Clinton, which ain't saying much; Bill Clinton was the best Republican president of the last 50 years. The good president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he was also an old-fashioned conservative so we're not supposed to like him here. (If Eisenhower was alive today he'd be a Blue Dog.) Unfortunately, Eisenhower served at the same time as Joseph McCarthy.

January 20, 1909 was the day Teddy Roosevelt relinquished the presidency to Taft. Since then, the Republicans have pretty much been on a death spiral.

[TheKentuckian]

15. Agreed. It didn't help to openly embrace the Klan about then either. (nt)

[gratuitous]

13. I think it was the Terri Schiavo affair

They started believing their own bullshit, and thought that because they could do something they should do something. It was at that point that a lot of people who had been largely indifferent to Republican shenanigans really woke up to the fact that their actions and their rhetoric didn't match hardly at all. The Republicans had called down the awesome power of Big Government to intervene in the personal tragedy of the Schiavo family, sweeping away the family's concerns, all of the judicial rulings, all of the work that had gone on before, and attempted to micromanage the last days of a woman who had been brain dead for over a decade. Even Chimpy took the unprecedented step of cutting short one of his interminable vacations to rush back to Washington to sign the bill to meddle in the matter.

The proof in the pudding for this is that you never hear about this anymore. Nobody on either side ever brings it up, and it's never cited as an example of Republican overreaching or overreacting. There is simply no question that the GOP blundered badly in this case, and there's no way to argue, even in Republican Cloud Cuckooland where they will argue that black is white, that the GOP was right in its overbearing interference.

[Berry Cool]

14. I would say Terri Schiavo got the motorcycle revving and approaching the ramp

but when Katrina hit and they obviously didn't give a damn and people who were not there saw it right there on their TVs, and realized "That could be us" and "If anything like that happens here, we are on our own," the cycle made its leap.

[FatDave]

17. It amazes me that they have any credibility whatsoever.

Seriously, how consistently wrong can a political party be and still be taken seriously? Pretty fucking consistently.

And we who were saying "Saddam doesn't have any fucking WMD's" before the invasion? We're considered the loonies. The mind fucking boggles.