Why would anyone still take Republicans seriously at this day and age?

Republicans: Spare Me Your Newfound 'Fiscal Responsibility':

At his press conference on Monday, President Barack Obama had to remind Mara Liasson of Fox News and NPR that it was the Republicans who doubled the national debt over the past eight years and it's a little strange to be hearing lectures from them now about how to be fiscally responsible. That interchange was my favorite part of the press conference. A savvy inside-the-Beltway reporter of Ms. Liasson's caliber shouldn't have to be reminded that George W. Bush and the Republican Congress were among the most fiscally reckless politicians in U.S. history.

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The posturing of the Washington Republicans since Obama was elected proves correct the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard when he outlined his understanding of "simulacrum" in advanced capitalist societies where ideologies and images are copies of copies without originals. It's the kind of Reaganism mass produced on T-shirts and coffee mugs, not the real record of Reagan's actions when he was president like his "cutting and running" in Lebanon, or his raising taxes 13 times to ward off an even worse fiscal crisis, or his negotiating in an atmosphere of detente with the Soviet Union he once called an "evil empire." The Republicans today are conforming to an ideology based on a myth that other Republicans created in 1997, a copy of a copy without an original.

So in 2009 what is left of the Grand Old Party? It appears that Republican politics today have become the politics of pastiche: They love independent women like Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter yet they hate independent women like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi; they love tax cuts and deregulation yet they also love to control women's bodies and decide who shall marry and who shall not; they love fictive workers like Joe the Plumber yet they hate real workers who want to pass the Employee Free Choice Act; and they hate the Senate filibuster until they love it to death. And while the "angry white male" is becoming the UNEMPLOYED "angry white male" the Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele says "work" does not mean "jobs."

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