Bad For The Nation, Bad For Parties

You've no doubt noticed over the past few months that the Right of the GOP has been become more influential and reaching for considerably more power. Sen Jim DeMint is probably as whacked on the right as any politician in somewhat recent history, he has pursued foreign adventures that under BushCo Congress would have resulted in accusations of treason. He had a chat with the Christian Broadcasting Network and laid out his desires and opinion of the Republican "leadership."

"The problem in the Republican Party is that the leadership has gone to the left," he said. "I need some new Republicans."

I'm pretty hard pressed to find that leftward tilt he seems to be referencing. Would that be the lockstep opposition to Democratic legislation?

"[We need] people who believe in constitutional government, a balanced budget and liberty and so I'm out across the country recruiting new republicans who I think if they get here will not only challenge the institutions of government but be willing to even challenge the Republican Party and our leadership if they feel like we're going in the wrong direction," DeMint said. "I think just a handful of new Republicans in the Senate could help change the direction."

Now go ahead and neglect the fact that none of the issues he's have had shit to do with Republican legislation, who is it that he's talking about here? It certainly has nothing to do with DeMint personally in political legislation. Not even remotely to do with his politics on religion, civil liberties, taxes and spending, or - well - essentially anything.

Jim DeMint may actually be operating under the delusion that some broad swath of Americans support his lunacy. This view would ignore the Democratic voters and a large portion of the non-affiliated and it would ignore some remaining segment of the Republicans. This sort of thinking leads to a Party in the low 20% and nationally irrelevant. Responsible opposition Parties are important to the process, not all ideas of any Party are so good that they cannot be improved with some input from a different perspective. In function today that is largely missing and going farther in that direction leads to even less input.

This crap drives Republicans out of their party and encourages the growth of Republican thinking in the Democratic Party. As a Democrat I find that offensive and destructive to my Party. You could see today's Senate for an example of where that gets you. The Democratic Party cannot hold all points of view other than the lunatic, it simply ceases to be a political party and becomes every thing other than lunacy and that is not a political point of view. I don't know what Republicans have to actually stand for, their rhetoric does not match their actions.

I could actually understand a drive toward smaller less intrusive government but they actually drive toward no such thing, their intrusions are not lesser, they are simply different. I really could care less what they land on, just that it be reflective of sufficient of the populace to have some kind of political impact. The problem is that Sen DeMint's nonsense doesn't address the dearth of political vision, it simply moves that lack in a more stupid direction.

Ah well, hold your breath and all that...