http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/13/1035848/-The-Republican-Partys-time-has-come—-and-gone?via=blog_1
.Sun Nov 13, 2011 at 03:00 PM PST.
The Republican Party's time has come— and gone
by Laurence LewisFollow
for Daily Kos.
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The Republican Party needs to be put out of its misery. A functioning Republic needs at least one opposition party, but the current and likely final iteration of the Republican Party is not it. The current iteration of the Democratic Party could be it, should it continue to fail to live up to its greatest history and increasingly mythological ideals, but that would depend on the creation of a legitimately viable progressive party, and for now at least that is not going to happen. But for the Democratic Party to recapture the magic of its greatest history, or failing that for a legitimately viable liberal party to emerge from the wreckage that is our current political system, the Republican Party must be put out of its misery. Whether you are a loyal Democrat, a wavering frustrated Democrat, a progressive Independent, or whether you are dreaming of the emergence of a legitimately viable liberal alternative, the Republican Party must be put out of its misery. All liberals and progressives should be able to unite behind that idea. Because if the Republican Party is put out of its misery, the Democrats no longer will be able to use the Republicans as excuse or foil and will once and for all finally be forced to prove what they are or aren't really about.
The embarrassment of embarrasments that is the Republican presidential field ought to be the final proof that the Republican Party has ceased to serve any valuable role in our political system. The lunatics have taken over. The Republican rejection of science and rationality once served various tactical purposes, but in previous generations it always was a feint to the theocrats whose primary political purpose for the Republicans was to enable the kleptocrats and the neo-Royalists. But while the Republican financial base continues to be those extremely wealthy who lack all conscience, its voting base now is the ignorant and the reality challenged. Most of the current Republican presidential field is not merely playing to this base, it is of it. No serious person can look at Herman Cain or Rick Perry or Ron Paul or Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum and see a future president. In a less surreal world these would be but cartoon characters. And yet one of them or someone equally absurd still may become the Republican presidential nominee. The base of the party desperately hopes so.
According to most polls, Mitt Romney remains the Republican frontrunner. That alone is proof of this essay's thesis. Had he not been born into political aristocracy, Romney's highest career aspiration may have been realized as a game show host. His entire political resume consists of a single term as governor, which he himself ended by not seeking reelection, largely because it was clear he would not have been reelected, thus destroying his hopes of becoming president. But as semi-permanent presidential candidate, Romney has spent the bulk of his campaign strategy running away from his own policy record as governor. Think about that. The leading Republican presidential candidate's main qualification to leadership is a single term in political office the accomplishments of which he'd rather everyone forget. Overall on policy, his astonishing whiplash flipflops are now coming at such a furious pace it leaves the observer dizzy. As People for the American Way's Michael B. Keegan summarized:
In Ohio, he endorsed a bill that took a sledgehammer to workers' rights, then couldn't decide if he would oppose its repeal, then finally decided he was for the anti-worker bill all along. On Tuesday, Ohio voters killed the bill by a whopping 61-39 percent margin.
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