Watching a once-great party circle the drain

[kpete]

here’s a very “Canadian” view of what’s happened to the GOP.


JEFFREY SIMPSON
Watching a once-great party circle the drain
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Mar. 09, 2012 2:00AM EST


Nothing would be easier than to laugh at the Republican Party, whose presidential candidates have vied for our amusement. A more dismal group has not been assembled since Sarah Palin dined alone.

Those who remain in the race for the Republican nomination, and those who have departed it, made up a group characterized by insularity, intellectual shallowness and meanness of spirit, coupled with an unshakable eagerness to pander to every holy roller, Tea Partier, gun worshipper, global warming denier, government hater, nativist and billionaire financier – or, as Yeats would say, “the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

That this crop of candidates was the best that a once-great party could muster says much about the state of presidential politics, Republican-style. It says even more about the state of conservative opinion in America.

That opinion, with all its shadings, is best characterized by a consuming anger – which explains why the campaign hasn’t been about differences or vision but about resentment and fear and perfervid rhetoric that candidates have directed at each other and at real and imagined threats ranging from Barack Obama to Muslims, China, European “socialists,” excessive government and mad Iranian mullahs.

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MORE:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/watching-a-once-great-party-circle-the-drain/article2363134/

[RKP5637]

1. The toilet needs to be flushed! n/t

[Flashmann]

2. The toilet needs to be flushed!

It'll need a good plunging too......Floaters go down hard...

[Marie Marie]

7. Looks like a job for Joe The Plumber.

[saras]

3. The PARTY hasn't been great since Abe Lincoln, though they've had a few outliers...

[Art_from_Ark]

9. Certainly the party of the late 1860's to late 1890s

was one rife with corruption. For example, the first Republican administration after Lincoln's (Grant's) became notorious for being the most corrupt American administration up to that point. The election of 1876 was stolen from the real winner, Samuel Tilden, by the Republicans, who subsequently dumped their appointed President, Rutherford B. Hayes, after one term because he wasn't corrupt enough for them. Hayes' successor, James A. Garfield, was also not corrupt enough, so he was shot by a "disgruntled office seeker" so that Garfield's vice president, Chester A. Arthur, who had the reputation of a being party hack who could easily be put in fat cats' pockets, would become President. But Arthur disappointed his handlers, and was unceremoniously dumped in 1884 after one term in favor of candidate James G. Blaine, who ultimately lost to Grover Cleveland.

[DonCoquixote]

14. Ike maybe, and even Nixon

realized you needed some government: he did found the EPA after all.

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. A more dismal group has not been assembled since Sarah Palin dined alone

Great line - an anti-matter take on a famouse JFK quote:

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Address at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners (29 April 1962), quoted in The White House Diary, at the JFK Library

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

[benld74]

5. Since a mantra of theirs is to shrink government,,

so that is can be drowned in a bathtub. I find the analogy of th GOP going down the drain apropro

[MichiganVote]

6. Except they were never a great party.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. The GOP never stood for great or grand

[bluedave]

10. I

think it was greedy

[daligirl519]

11. Yep. . .

GOP = Greedy Old Pricks.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

18. Hopefully the G means gone

[NICO9000]

12. When where they ever "great"?

They've always been douchebags who hate the common person since at least 1900.

Party of Lincoln, my arse!

[Fearless]

13. May have been grand but certainly never great.

[Flatpicker]

15. They are

A pretty terrible group. There's no way around that.
It's been visibly worse since the Kerry v Bush election. It's as if the fridge door was flung open and all those half eaten "Science Experiments" wandered out into the kitchen.

Twisted, decaying, mutant humanity, almost a cartoon parody of what evil should look like.

Been thinking of Kerry and the purple band-aid issue a lot today.

[Cobalt-60]

16. They're using every trick in the fascist playbook

If they steal votes for themselves and obstruct enough against them, they'll have won.
No how pathetic this bunch of Mussolini impersonators may appear, they're backed by an election theft machine with decades of experience.
Our minimum objective in 2012 should be to drive them into the sea.
Once during the Bush* administration Pukes were bragging about how they were going to destroy the Democratic Party.
While I don't think it's possible to completely destroy a cosmic cockroach like the Puke Party - it can be rendered impotent if enough of them are voted out.
We can anticipate victory. But only a super massive turnout guarantees it.

[Zoeisright]

17. Great? HA!

They've been against progress, science, reality, justice, and morality since the beginning.