Red Till I'm Dead
Everyone knows about Senator Arlen Specter’s dramatic switch from the Republican Party to join the Democrats and its implications towards the magic 60. What I will underscore is the GOP insanity that led to the development. Specter switched for the simple reason that he wants to stay in office. The GOP decided to gun for Spector in light of his vote for the stimulus package, OK, fine, you can have your primary. Ever play chess, confidently working your strategy, and then in one move your opponent exposes a new and deeply humiliating reality that clearly exposes you as the most clueless creature that ever lived?The GOP just lost a veteran Senator, and the losses have only begun with GOP Lord Limbaugh suggesting Specter take McCain with him, including his daughter Meghan, who quickly twittered back:
"Red till I’m dead, baby!"
Meghan makes a strong assertion and lacks Specter's set of distinctions. Clearly her trajectory diverges from that of Lord Limbaugh, Sadist Cheney, and Darth Rove. The jury is out regarding which trajectory has a GOP in it. From the open endorsement of torture to asserting that the swine flu is a tactic to get the confirmation of Kathleen Sebelius as HHS Secretary, the GOP has ceased its dance with a snake. It is the snake.
posted by x4mr at 8:06 PM
11 Comments:
The headline "Red Till I'm Dead" over the photo of Specter as he defects, ahh!
The chess analogy is just perfect and beautifully captures the essence of what occurred.
The Republicans are imploding in upon themselves.
You heard it from me first: Watch the Fox News ratings and ad revenue start declining over the next few months.
I don't think that 'ole Specter has any reason to vote along democratic party lines. Besides, I find the whole 60 votes thing repugnant. If somebody wants to filibuster, fine, do it. But this supermajority thing is BS. Either vote nay, yay, filibuster, or STFU.
I have to confess that I am almost entertained by what is happening to the Republicans right now. Isn't this a sweet case of reaping what has been sown for so long?
The thugs got in bed with the southern racists Liza knows so well after the civil rights movement of the 60s, and then, shifting further in the 80s, married the religious freaks.
Now we have an African American president and racism smells like dog shit. Now we have an Internet connected generation that accepts diversity of religion, race, sexual orientation, etc., in the face of real problems like health care and employment security. The Republicans bitch and offer nothing. They are utterly bankrupt. May they go down in humiliating flames like the arrogant chess player.
Checkmate, assholes.
Instead of wishing Bush and Cheney an imminent death, may they live long. May they live long enough to see their place in history as the most reviled, abhorrent, and hated administration in US history, a presidency so obscene that it destroyed an entire party in a country that only had two.
I don't like the idea of a shrinking party.The members will feel cornered and become even more hateful, veangeful and beligerant. Political disaster.
@Mariana
Or their party adapts and moves back to the middle.
Maybe right now Meghan McCain may say that.
But I personally know several former Republicans (including local office holders) and Specter makes clear that what Olympia Snowe said (though she also reaffirmed her own commitment to the Republican party) is true: Rinos are unwelcome and subject to being drilled out of the GOP.
Add that to the already documented fact that growing demographics like college educated younger voters and Hispanics are moving towards the Democrats is that the GOP's only hope is that the Democrats really screw up. But that's not a good position to be in-- the only chance you have to win is if your opponent makes a mistake, and at this point things are so far gone that it would have to be a massive, GOP-worthy kind of mistake (like destroy the economy, start an unecessary war, fumble a major disaster and ignore people suffering from it, you know stuff like that.)
I don't think the Republican Party can adapt at this given time. More likely a schisma will lead to the birth of a new party.
Eli,
The Republicans will not get the mistake they want. Unlike Bush, Obama is not a buffoon. He will not commit blunders of Iraq or Katrina scale.
I think x4mr's last paragraph says it. The moderates and the Limbaugh gang are diverging. When Meghan declares, "Red till I'm dead" she's maintaining that it's the Limbaugh crowd that has to leave and crate another party.
Specter telegraphs the opposite, that the Republicans will cling to the "kooks." Meghan will only get to stay red if she takes the red with her when she leaves.
2006 was the shot over the bow. 2008 hit the rudder. 2010 takes the ship down.
In the past week, both Peggy Noonan and The Weekly Standard have taken GOP purists like South Carolina's DeMint to task for confusing a movement with a party in a two-party system. There is a Spartan quality to what is being insisted on the right: that only those who march in lockstep and pass every litmus test can stay in the ranks. Specter was on Meet the Press today and rattled off the names of six or seven moderate GOP senators who were prominent when he was elected in 1980. All of them are gone now and their shoes will not be filled.
Narrowing the base means a narrowing of appeal. People who disdain ideology (Jeb Bush is a current example, as was his father, but not his older brother) are the sole hope of the splintering Republican Party. Will the Move On faction in the Democratic Party heed the warning cry and stop their own nonsensical plans for purges?
At least any time soon, I don’t think the Democrats will adopt any extreme ideologies that result in losses of members or supporters. At least for the next four years, they are led by a powerful, intelligent, and highly astute leader surrounded by intelligent staff. The Democrats have not adopted W’s anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-science viewpoints of the religious right and the other "low information" morons that follow Limbaugh-Hannity, Inc. Also, the Republicans have so ingrained lying and deception (while 80% of the country likes Obama, Rove declared he was the most polarizing president in 40 years) that they are now fooling themselves into oblivion.
The assertion that the swine flu is a political trick? They’re losing it, and virtually everything they say is a laughingly hypocritical contradiction of what occurred during the Bush administration. Now they’re clamoring about checks and balances after spending eight years dismantling them. Now they’re screaming about the deficit after eight years of "deficits don’t matter." It’s pathetic and embarrassing.
Regarding W and everyone around his obscene presidency and party, I feel rage. Don’t shoot these F******.
Let them burn.
Don't hold back, Nav.
Rex's comment is spot on. The distinction between "movement" and "party" is most useful and pertinent, and the conservatives have lost it.
I think it comes from arrogance and ignorance. They are so self-righteous and full of themselves that they believe their own spin.
I'm pretty sure it was this blog that posted a story about registration statistics, and they would make a smart Republican faint. NO ONE is registering Republican. Seriously, more people choose "other."
The gay stuff drop kicks every voter under 30. Somewhere I read that the Republican party is devolving into something between the Scientologists and the cult that drank the kool-aid.
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