The Republican Party Died With Ronald Reagan

[Beloved Citizen]

The only Republican president to serve two full terms in nearly half a century now lies 6 feet under the ground, and judging by what the polls are saying the fortunes of his party are right there in the box with him.

No wonder they dragged this thing out for a week. The best politician they've managed to come up with in a decades is dead, and all they have to replace the fallen icon is a half-mad gibbering idiot and the small circle of rapidly aging crooks who handle him.

And as we all know, Caligula is no Ronald Reagan.

However, in a vain attempt to resurrect the failing fortunes of the all but washed-up Shrub and the party that wears him around its neck like an albatross, watch Karl Rove struggle mightily to create a voodoo death cult around the fallen Gipper, complete with backwoods testimonials of quasi-spiritual Elvis-like sightings in super market aisles and Wal*Mart parking lots.

Oh, and expect to see a pompadour miraculously grow on Shrub's noggin. Some will cite it as proof of his having been touched by the hand of this departed political saint.

[kwolf68]

1. LOL

:7

[mwar]

2. And long may the party stay dead

with it's fallen idol.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

3. "rumors of death are greatly exeggerated"?

Last I checked they control Congress, the Presidency, and quite a few statehouses.

[kaitykaity]

5. My thought as well.

Except I saw what happened to Tony Blair this week, and
I see the same kind of crushing loss for the Thugs this
November.

[camby]

4. "The Republican Party died with Dwight Eisenhower"

Personally, I think Ike was the last Republican who embodied the true Republican spirit. Can you imagine Reagan speaking out against the military industrial complex? Not hardly! Reagan was a nice guy, good public speaker, story teller, yada yada yada, BUT: he started the ball rolling down that slippery slope into the abyss in which the party now finds itself with his phony populism.

[shraby]

6. Nixon started the slippery

slope. Reagan just widened it. Bush is making it slipperier.

[SlingBlade]

7. I Knew I smelled something.

Someone needs to drive a stake through the stinking corpse of this organization.
It’s reeking up the whole world.

[starroute]

8. Republican politicians do not make good presidential candidates

Over the last half-century, the only elected Republican president who had worked his way up through a traditional political career was Richard Nixon -- and he was a disaster.

Eisenhower was a general who'd never held elected office. Reagan was a movie actor turned governor of California. Bush I had served four years in Congress, failed to be elected to the Senate, and then held a string of appointed positions. Bush II is a failed businessman turned governor of Texas. The shallowness and superficiality of each of these Republican presidents may be the result of their not having been tempered by the electoral process.

In contrast, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton each had a background of multiple elective offices and steady advancement to higher levels of responsibility.

It seems as though the Republican party can't win presidential elections with candidates who are readily identifiable as Republicans or who have a clear history of espousing Republican positions. Instead, they have to turn to "outsiders" without much of a political history. And the present crop of Republican office-holders doesn't hold out much hope of things being any different in the future.

[Wilber_Stool]

9. It didn't just die,

it committed suicide.