Iowa Pointless To GOP Primary?

Tonight Rachael Maddow made the point that Iowa is pointless in GOP Primary circles because she said the Iowa GOP has radicalized itself out of relevance. I agree with her that in regard to a General Election that segment of the GOP is meaningless. I don't agree that they're so far outside that GOP voters other places won't go in their direction. Even Mark McKinnon bothered to note that SC has similar voters.

I don't think that this year the GOP is all that hot for an establishment candidate. I do think they've self-obsessed sufficiently to block out the reality that a hard core candidate would play poorly against the President. A real large number are convinced that they are a part of some grand sweeping movement. There is also the matter of the CU decision and the groups, including Koch outfits, who don't like what they see in the "establishment" candidates. There is a closed little world composed of FauxNews, Rush (and ilk), the CU enabled bunch, and '10 elected GOPers that doesn't see past its narrowly defined limits.

Maybe Rachael and some of the other pundits didn't notice that it was GOP Primaries that ran Christine ODonnel, Sharon Angel, and a host of loons that did win and don't even come close to GOP establishment credentials. Now maybe you'd like to make the point that Sharon and Christine didn't win and that it was Blue Dogs that lost or just poorly run campaigns that lost to the loons. That does not matter. There is a usurper in office, that guy is in our House. It isn't just racism, it is socialism, communism, liberalism, whateverism that is different from the GOP Americanism narrative of the past couple decades.

The GOP has managed to stir itself into a complete frothing foaming fit over Democrats. The BushCo theme of fellow travelers traitorous defeatist liberals was only the opening salvo, now their old white guy POW got handed his ass by that usurper and only the principled obstructionism of GOP Congresscritters has save the nation from ... something horrible. What didn't sink in to the GOP establishment while they were busily fomenting fear and loathing was that frightened angry people don't think long term and strategically and vote for ... Mittens (or whatever establishment type they settle on). It isn't just imaginary devils scaring these folks, unemployment is high and threatening and wages suck and the country's demographics are changing and hell, a lot is changing. Many many people resist change and not much matches what they think it ought to.

I'd like to see a rational political landscape, I'd sure like to see an election where the centrist Obama doesn't look like a left wing nut next to their candidate because there is a hell of a lot of reasonable ground to the left of Obama. I'm sorry Rachael, you're giving way to much rationality credence to the GOP today and you're far from alone.