Posted by Greg Laden on November 29, 2009 So, I stop paying attention for a couple of days and Rachel Maddow is now an older white-haired straight white guy???
Whatever, this is an interesting report.
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I like the idea that the Republicans are terrified of their grassroots. I certainly am.
This is scary, because it could result in the emergence of a real-life Christian nationalist party as a force in American politics. That would suck big time.
For those for whom Dean’s report just whets the appetite, here is a link to the GOP “purity test” (not as interesting as the purity tests I remember from high school). I sure hope the Republicans adopt it!
Purity tests and factions and teabaggers – oh, my!
The GOP has lost its collective mind. It’s a little easier to understand ringleader Michael Steele, though, when you know who’s coaching him:
(social satire)
Also over at Lester & Charlie’s blog, there’s a poll asking what items were left off of the GOP’s purity test. Things they all believe in but didn’t write down, like “God put the hole in the ozone so he can watch you.”
Check it out here: http://bit.ly/llPZg
Why do you assume that ‘Rachel’ Dean is straight?
I always thought that it would be the Democratic Party that would be the first to split. Now I don’t why I ever thought that.
The political spectrum in the U.S. has been moving ever further right for the last twenty or thirty years* and there has always been something to fill the void on the left, the Citizen’s Party (my first presidential vote was for Barry Commoner), and the Green Party. But as the Republican Party has shifted right, they’ve been creeping into (publicly) unexplored political territory. Now the Republican Party has awakened a monster, and that monster is galloping off the scale, and the moderates are scared it’s going to carry them all off the cliff.
You have basically two factions, one led by Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, and a weaker faction led by Michael Steele and the few moderate Republicans left. And they may only have power because Limbaugh and Palin don’t hold office. Yet. There’s a power struggle going on and I think it’s going to end up with a split in the Republican Party. The interesting questions are Who will get to keep the Republican name and What will the new party be called?
(In a rational world, both factions would get together and realize that a split will only help the Democrats, and they would reach some compromise on their platform that would leave a monolithic Republican Party in place. You see the flaw there, don’t you? I used the words ‘rational’ and ‘compromise’ in that sentence, and to one faction those words don’t exist.)
*Just reflect for a moment that Nixon, a Republican, imposed price controls on the economy; I don’t think such a thing would even cross Obama’s mind, would the conditions so warrant.
It is amazing. I never thought the GOP would get this bad when I quit it back in ’80.
But then, I’ve been told by today’s Religious Reichists that Nixon was a communist so maybe I just need to readust my credulity meter.
Republican politics as I remember them:
’70s: I am not a crook
’80s: trickle-down economics
’90s: contract with America
’00s: patriot act (includes Democrats but basically initiated by Republicans)
now the purity test – can we count this as the ’10s slogan?
don’t they all refer back to the first one?
rcs:
Only indirectly — Nixon was a crook of a different color. And destructive sociopathic tendencies aside, he was actually a competent president.
No, the modern Republican party began with Laffer and Wanniski’s economic theories in the mid-70s (post-Nixon) and the Godbotting of the Reagan campaign in 1980.
he was actually a competent president.
That’s the oddest thing I’ve read all week. How old are you, boy?
The illegal war in Cambodia? The fact that his staff and cabinet had to trick him into not nuking Hanoi?
Also, on Republicans more generally, are you aware of the fact that every major social program that we have come to know and love of the 20th century, going back to the 30s, was vigorously opposed to by the Republican party? If the health care reform bill gets one or two Republican votes it will be about average.
I like the idea that the Republicans are terrified of their grassroots.
It’s unfortunate that the Democrats aren’t the slightest bit afraid of their grassroots and, rather, avidly seek opportunities to cockpunch them.
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