The Downward Spiral of the GOP

Not since the ascension of Barrack Obama to the Presidency has the Republican brand faced such a crisis. As the town hall shouting matches grow ever more distant and “Obama’s Waterloo” strategy continues to recede into oblivion, the right-wing party has become the ‘party of no’, no cooperation, no ideas and no hope.

It seems that everywhere you turn the news is grim, Republican identity has continued to slide. Less Americans consider themselves Republicans than any time in recent history, down to around 20%. The Birther movement has not only stalled, their foreign born leader, Orly Taitz, got smacked down in Federal Court. Judge Clay Land, appointed by George W. Bush I might add, hit Ms. Taitz with a $20,000 sanction and ruled that her conduct “boarders on delusional” and “demonstrates bad faith.” Even the darling of the Radical Right, Sarah Palin, has watched her approval ratings dip (40%) and her disapproval ratings soar to (53%). It seems all their numbers are down, everywhere you look and while they take glee in Obama’s ratings slip a bit, they are facing levels of low that make Dick Cheney look good.

Even worse for the Repubs, the Tea-Bagger movement (lol) has been attacking Republican candidates for not being Right-Wing enough, even heckling highly conservative Lindsey Graham for daring to seek bi-partisanship on a few token bills (see video below). Apparently a man who voted with Bush 90%+ of the time and has a strong conservative rating is apparently a Liberal in the eyes of the Radical Right, although, and much to his credit, Graham did call the Birthers “crazy”.

The Tea-Baggers wish to push the Republican Party even further to the Right. They’re not the only ones either. Recently, in an interview with Rush Limbaugh, he claimed the defeat of John McCain proved the Republicans will only win elections if they move even further to the Right.

The Radical Right has seemingly taken possession of the Republican Party. They are succeeding in purifying it of the old North-Eastern Wall St. Fiscal Conservatives and this is reflected by the virtual revolution across New England. 10 years ago, outside of the big cities, the map used to look pretty red, today the Dems have taken so many districts that the whole North East has turned blue. This used to be the ideological base of the Republican Party, ironically, the South was the base of the Dems. Today that has gone topsy-turvy and the Repubs are fast becoming the party of the Old South, older White males, some of the elderly and just about nothing else, as they bleed even states like Virginia to the rising youth and overall rejection of the tired principles of Conservatism.

Olbermann

Combined with this downward trend are the rising levels of minorities in this country, whom the Repubs are losing hands down. Republican Committee Chairmen Michael Steele, you know, the guy notorious for wanting to “hip-hopify” the Republican Party. Well Steele recently launched a new blog which he originally titled “What Up”. Within 24 hours and after a string of complaints, he altered the name to “Changing the Game”. Racist? Probably not. Ignorant? Yes! Still it goes further. They released a memo that cited historically minority/civil rights Republicans, many of them too old to identify with today’s Republican Party, such as Abraham Lincoln. There was, however, one member included that was outrageous, Jackie Robinson! Sure he supported his friend, Nelson Rockefeller, yet, in his own words “ never identified myself with one party or another in politics” and “By and large Republicans had ignored blacks and sometimes handpicked a few servile leaders in the black community to be their token “niggers.””

Sounds like a true bonafide Republican to me. The same is true today, as the Party becomes more White, more Southern, more radical and perceptively more racist.

A new poll showed that a majority of Right-Wingers identify Fox News as the leader of the Republican Party, much to the chagrin of Michael Steele and Congressional Leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. This may give fringe conspiracy theorists like Glenn Beck good ratings for his paranoid delusions, yet continues to lead the Republicans further and further away from mainstream America and closer and closer to the edge.

Many leaders are speaking, although it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Republicans such as Bob Dole recently endorsed some form of health care reform and Bill Frist stressed the need to sit down and educate the Birthers. Lindsey Graham, as mentioned before, not only put the Birthers in their place, he criticized Glenn Beck. Steven Hayward, a conservative Writer, lamented the rise of “brain dead” conservatism, in which he recognizes the lack of intellectual writings that give the Conservative movement its ideological backbone. In its place, he notes, is the Rushes and Becks and Coulters who do nothing but rally the base into fervor. “Conservatism has been reduced to sound bites” Hayward remarks, ”We’ve traded Buckley for Beck.”. Even he, though, had to play homage to the brain dead loud mouths by saying that there is “nothing wrong” with the Malkins and the Coulters, though he does note that they are poor substitute for the intellectual works of the past (You know, the ideological slippery manuals to properly deceive the common man into endorsing tax-cuts for the rich and corporate welfare). He ends the statement with a bone-chilling prediction of the future for Republicans, saying that “When the ideas are absent, the movement has nothing to offer — except opposition.” Further adding, “That doesn’t work for long in American politics.”

As the GOP launches its revamped RNC website, there is little to celebrate. While it is more like the DNC and Obama websites which dominated last years election, the RNC has fallen so far behind in technology that they’re playing catch up. Will this help improve their reach? Of course, yet reaching new people when you have nothing to sell but hate, opposition and the same old tired ideas of yesteryear, than your likely to get the door slammed on your ass by the American People.