So, the Dixie Chicks make a throwaway comment in England, and the wing-nuts

[salin]

go wild - their rationale was it may be okay to criticize a President in the US, but not on foreign soil. But GOP Congressmen go to the Middle East and try to sabotage US policy, and that is fine and dandy. Heroic to the wing-nuts.

The wing-nuts went apoplectic over Cindy Sheehan's protests against the war, ignoring her loss as her motivation. She was a troll - duped and used by the democrats - they would write. (Ironic, huh.) Now, they are claiming victim hood when they try to violate fire codes so that they can yell and scream and bully congressmen/women and their other constituents.

Go further back - I remember attending a fund raiser for Barbara Boxer in SF back in 1998. The then First Lady was attending/speaking (Hillary Clinton), the wing-nuts were outside screaming harshities.

I think we are watching the slow acceleration of the demise of a political party. Hasn't happened since T Roosevelt was essentially chased out of his party. Go back to my third example - this was the base fuming after years of fomenting rwmedia around the Clintons. We used to think it was just Clinton hatred, but clearly it is something much more fundamental. Moveon was born as a response to the Clinton impeachment hearings/antics.

Back to the second example - I think there were three events happening over a short period of time that led a lot of the public that used to only partway pay attention and had been drawn into the bush rhetoric (esp after 911) to pay more attention and to begin to become repulsed. First was the sideshow around Schaivo - and the discomfort many felt with the implications of what the wing-nuts wanted (to dictate law against living wills; soon Senator Martinez even passed out talking points touting this as a great angle for the right to lifers). Then there was the summer of Sheehan. Mixed media coverage, but the early phase (out at the camp near Crawford) where this Mom of a fallen soldier tried to meet with W but kept being rejected, created an image of a sympathetic character - the harsh ridicule of the rowdy, rude and raucous gop base was rather unseemly to many. A little more of the moderate voters edged away from the looneyright. Finally there was the disastrous Katrina response - and then the very ugly rwbase response - spittle flying out of the mouth while blaming the victims. That mix of incompetence of the administration, and the ugly callousness toward fellow americans pushed/shoved/forced a deluge of folks away from the GOP. Next came the earthquake (politically speaking) of the 2006 midterm elections, followed by the tremendous change in voting patterns in Obama's 2008 win (heck - my red Indiana is now considered purple to blue!)

While I can not predict the short-term impact of these mobtownhall meetings, and I do not know if real violence will occur due in part to the extreme ratcheting up of dangerous rhetoric by well listened to voices on the radical right, I do think that even more of the public will be repulsed. I think that the republican party of yore is gone, and that the republican party of today is imploding and working feverishly to marginalize itself to the point (at some point in the near future) of irrelevance. They just can't seem to help themselves.

[lob1]

1. They despise Dr. Kovorkian, but continue to commit suicide.

[salin]

2. indeed - much quicker to the point than my post

but indeed that just about sums it up.

[bridgit]

3. I agree we're witnessing the demise of the GOP from their own brittle, intransigent...

ever-constricting political dementia. A sign suggesting such is found in the GOP's break from being able to interpret the world around them, or the data from it, with any long term benefit for the world, which is not good for America. So that they have isolated themselves, actually, from themselves; having a keen and mercurial relationship to segregation they segregated themselves first & away from America - they're split - not amongst themselves per se but inside their heads though 'split' is being kind when they are understood more clearly as: splintered, certainly after reviewing the level of engagement they've routinely chosen to descend to along with those tactics down there.

If ultimate power ultimately corrupts; if such power is the drug, the ultimate aphrodisiac ala C Street which we know they think it to be, then after these some 12+ years previous while they were marching through the rotunda with a silver platter full of their half-baked torts like the sleazy used car salesmen/lawyers/watermelon shoot'n/tongue talking tel-evangelical tyrants they are while cooking up no-bid crony war profit deals with the despots of the world watch the birdie style? Well...well, first of all:

Wow! What a tumble. So the mighty truly do fall...down on their knees trying to tweeze what they hope are little white rocks, dangling chads and belly button lint from out the carpet that's right - the GOP has *tremendous* substance abuse & withdrawal issues they feel they should not have to endure cold-turkey...

But I disagree. The GOP has pushed the dope on themselves, they're among America's user-problems http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cGAcqBb_tA