Republican Symptomology

When you've been handed your head in two elections running and become immaterial in the House a certain vacuum occurs, and this one isn't simply between Republican ears. No one voice or thought or even coherent mixture of thoughts speaks for the Republicans. The past few days of uncertainty and debate about Gov Palin's appearance at the Republican House Senate dinner is emblematic of that. The choice of speakers between Palin and Gingritch seemed a matter of controversy, as though the impact of a choosing between a washed up Reagan idolizing pol and a windup used-to-be beauty queen talking doll loser was a big deal.

You could have as a speaker mean natured ignorance with tits or fat old white man mean natured ignorance as emblem of your resurgence as a political party in Crackerdom. The big mystery was solved as the idea man did the talking and the winking sparkles gal did the picture taking.

Somebody will accuse me of being partisanly mean. They can KMA. Lizard Gingritch eulogizes a Reagan that never existed despite his record being quite public and Palin poses. Republicans offer you fear, T&A, and more fear and think it might just work this time. The target, of course, is the donors, the bucks that showed up and could be counted on to swallow this stuff if they could get next to something resembling a celebrity in Republican circles. Their problem is that their stuff gets played to the people that, in the end, vote.

In certain circles Palin is hot, not as in an achiever but as sex and in others her insistence on ignorance as solution is orthodoxy so it will play to them and Newt can reach the GWB acolytes and the "I got mine" mythologizers of Reaganism. That isn't much of an audience come election time. It misses more than 70% of the people who will vote - per polling. (go ahead and quibble about a couple percent either way) They have real problems with their spiel, actual numbers and results. Americans are damned unhappy with the results and seem to be noticing the numbers that have been piling up for years. I don't care whether the god or greed faction wins out, they're cutting out their dissenting or moderating voices and that means failure. It wouldn't matter if their ideology were right or left having nothing to restrain the hard core fanatics kills politically. There is no neat right or wrong solution in politics, ideology doesn't trump reality. Solutions are messy because people and their situations are messy.

They've painted themselves into a corner where the egos and narrow views of select groups clash and grind with no elder statesmen to play referee. This mess played out over several days of Newt/Sarah factions making noises and accomplishing nothing and leaving no camp satisfied or reasonable looking. This bunch proposes to govern, actually run a country and they can't even put on a fundraising dinner.

Meanwhile outside this fracas you've got the two ends trying to out play each other at stupidity, Pawlenty has decided he needs to get nearer Rush calling the US a 70's Banana Republic and bemoaning socialism and meanwhile the radio-babbler is upping the ante for elected Republicans by advocating a boycott of GM and Chrysler so Obama's foray into socialism fails. I even know some Republicans who work for GM and I don't think they'll care to be the collateral damage. I'll bet my teabagging sis who hates Obama's socialism is rooting for Rush to crush her hubby's company. I breathlessly await the Confederate States' foreign auto Senator shills to pile on - and run a (R) in Michigan. I love hearing socialized medicine drool from their lips as health care costs drive American industry into the toilet. It's easy enough, if you weren't hardworking enough to be a Congressman you don't deserve to have the benefit of Government Health Care, you ignorant slackers; that'll solve that.

I honestly believe there is great value in having an effective opposition party, but I couldn't care less if this particular stain (er strain) of Republicanism becomes the 21st Century Whigs. If the Theocrats and Plutocrats fall into the morass of their ethical cesspool of fear, greed and murderous hate it is small loss, something or somethings will replace their blight on the American scene and speak to enough people to be effective.

I know perfectly good and well that I'm preaching to the choir here, any that read this and are informed by Faux News and the radio-babblers will only be incensed that I'm so impolite, as they follow the factually challenged off a cliff. These are the advocates of moral absolutism who want to debate the efficacy of something as intrinsically un-American as torture. They need to have a chat with their god because right about now he's got to be pretty pissed-off. Oh hell, they'd wave their Bibles as they drove forward his crucifixion all over again with chants from the Pharisees - their current idols.