Goodbye, GOP Written by JOY-ANN REID joyreidweb.gifOnce upon a time, there were two relevant, functioning, political parties. The Democrats were the party of Tip ONeill, Pabst Blue Ribbon, union guys and the rainbow coalition. Republicans were the party of bosses who drink cognac, and Alex P. Keaton. The parties traded the White House five times between 1960 and 2000, with the four Democrats and five Republicans who won the presidency emerging from mixed geographies: Ronald Reagan was once governor of liberal California, Jimmy Carter, of conservative Georgia. There were Rockefeller Republicans across the Northeast, and Reagan Democrats in Detroit. There was nothing particularly disturbing about either party (if you discount Richard Nixon and Iran-Contra,) though both parties had their share of scandals. You knew at the end of the day that Democrats fought poverty and Republicans fought taxes. It was all so simple then. Today, Im not sure there are two functioning parties. Democrats, who dominated Congress for most of the last 60 years, do so again, having survived the Republican Revolution of 1994 that created Republican majorities in the House and Senate for the first time since Eisenhower, and gave Republicans total control of the federal government (thanks to the Supreme Court) in 2000. Since then, something has gone terribly wrong with the GOP. For starters, the party seems completely stumped by a popular president, Barack Obama. Meanwhile, its scrambling to both defend and distance itself from the failed presidency of George W. Bush. The economic mugging the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress perpetrated on the country for six years was bad enough; Mr. Bush was simply signing every bill his party put in front of him. As for tax cuts that made about 400,000 very rich Americans even richer, and the total economic collapse on the way out the door? As Dick Cheney would say, stuff happens. And then there are the Bush-era national security ideas that, while they had the complicity of some weak-kneed Democrats after 9/11, are now Official Property of the GOP. Some of these ideas are so radical, theyre not recognizable as American: the all-powerful unitary executive, indefinite detention without trial, sneak and peek searches of private homes, pre-emptive war, warrantless wiretapping, and worst of all, torture specifically, the kind of torture waterboarding made infamous by the Spanish Inquisition, the Khmer Rouge, Maoist China and the Japanese and Gestapo during World War II. Add them to the list of Things Republicans are Defending, while simultaneously declaring a 3-percent tax increase on the rich to be tyranny. Even as they are haunted by the ghost of George W. Bush, Republicans keep scaring up the ghost of Richard Nixon, as when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a group of Stanford students last week that when the president authorizes waterboarding, its not torture. Meanwhile, a raft of memos detailing torture techniques with cold precision are in a sense, Bushs Pentagon papers. Add to this baggage the outsized importance of the religious right, and carnival barkers like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and the boss himself, Rush Limbaugh. The requirement that elected Republicans swear fealty to both has only accelerated the GOPs transformation into a rump party with narrow appeal and virtually no coherent national message. And with the partys political talent bench consisting of Sarah Palin, folksy-talkin Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Britney Spears concert fan Eric Cantor, bumbling RNC chair Michael Steele, and lately, Jeb Bush whose last name is BUSH, its no wonder the religious muckrakers and right-wing shock jocks have the floor. Demographically, the GOP has all but disappeared from the West Coast and the Northeast, and moderate Republicans are becoming an endangered species. After Sen. Arlen Specters convenient exit, there are exactly two Republican senators from the entire northeastern region both from Maine. Just one in five Americans calls himself or herself a Republican, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC and NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls, and the party is practically walled into the South and Appalachia. Republicans have long since lost black voters, and theyve also spurned the fastest-growing ethnic group: Hispanics, due to a strange obsession with erecting a Berlin Wall across the Mexican border. The 219 Republicans in the current Congress include zero blacks, five Hispanics (four of whom are from Florida) and one Jew: Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. And whats the GOPs answer to this tale of unending woe? Tea parties. Hurray. As a Democrat, this should all be great news. But any good democracy needs a credible opposition. And right now, America is one party short. Joy-Ann Reid is a writer and media/political strategist who worked on President Barack Obamas Florida campaign. JoyAnnReid@Gmail.com
"Joy-Ann Reid is a writer and media/political strategist who worked on President Barack Obama’s Florida campaign." LOL!!! I can't wait for November of 2012 to see what she is writing. _
"Joy-Ann Reid is a writer and media/political strategist who worked on President Barack Obamas Florida campaign." LOL!!! I can't wait for November of 2012 to see what she is writing. _
Great article that really hits the nail on the head. Even the republican nominee-to-be this year is a former democrat who believes in socialized medicine. Na, na-na, Na, Hey-Hey gooodbye GOP.
I hope the GOP doesn't go away. They were America's last line of defense against marxist wackos like Obama, Pelosi and Reid, and then they became LBJ-style Democrats. Let's hope they can pull it together before it's too late for America.
Even Pat Robertson realizes that the GOP is finished, given the weirdness of the Tea Party. It's wonderful that the GOP was done in by the Golem of its own creation, the ********** simpletons who actually believed the nonsense the GOP cynically propagandized about all these years.
Fixed for you. Only a liberal would claim with Obama's strong approval under 20% that the GOP is dead
Conservatism has devolved into a weird mix of knownothingism and an urge to punish working Americans by transforming our economy into third world status. It's truly a pathological ideology that is totally bankrupt. The next election will see the end of conservatism for a generation as Americans reject the weirdness eminating from the GOP in the form of Cain and Perry and Bachmann.
she's also black. feel free to use that to bash her,too. 54% of Republicans want taxes raised on the $250k/yr & above earners & the Party of No is ignoring the majority of their own base. sounds like suicide to me. G'bye GOP
So? hahahaha The Race card. So typical of far left nutballs BTW genius, have you looked at my sig? Oh thats right, he's just an Uncle Tom to you isn't he? LOL When you actually start winning elections again and Obama gets above even 25% strongly approve, we'll talk
Can you imagine Perry or Bachmann or Cain in a real election. It would be a joke. Obama would have a field day. Romney is at least marginally sane, but the **********s will never nominated him. They hate him because he only pretends to be a uneducated and kooky as them, and because he's a Satan worshipping Mormon. The GOP is politically and morally bankrupt.
Funny article. Joy-Ann Reid seems to be out of touch and trapped in the past or has a severe case of Baghdad Bob syndrome exhibiting chronic denial of reality. For starters......the GOP is hardly "stumped" by the popular fool Barack Obama. Lets recall some reality here. The GOP were written off after the election of Obama. Many on the left were making similar predictions as Joy-Ann here; the GOP were in it's final death throes......soon to be relegated to the dustbin of history...... Maybe they were right? But then something strange happened. The Obama and his Dem majority in congress began to actually implement their far left transformative agenda. Tarp, Stimulus, Obamacare, Government Motors takeover......lawsuits against states enforcing immigration laws..........Fast and furious, Solyndra, and on, and on...... The partisan fashion in which these bills were passed and the trillions in tax payer dollars being commited resulted in the Tea Party movement. Despite mocking and derision by the fools Obama, Reid, and Pelosi, the movement grew in number, strength, and political organization. November 2010. The Sheelacking. The repudiation of the transformative agenda, the Obama's extremist ideological policies, and his politics of partisan division. The GOP, written off as irrelevant a mere 18 months before and with Tea Party support, orchestrated a historical election that changed the political makeup of more than half the states including 7 new Senators, 29 new Republican Governors, 9 of the 10 key swing states for 2012, more than 600 Republican state legislators, and the largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 65 years. The impact will be felt for at least a decade. Demographically, the Dem party has the West Coast and the Northeast but are losing the rest of the country as moderate Democrats have been extinct for some time now having been shoved aside by the hard left extremists from Soros groups like MoveOn.org and others. After the mid-term shellacking when MoveOn operatives and the DNC actually took out advertising against Blue Dog Democrats, the South turned Red. Joy-Ann would love the next election to be another anti-Bush referendum .........LOL In fact, the article comes off a bit desperate. No mention of 3 years of incompetence of the Obama administration, no mention of the exacerbation of the economic mess, the record breaking unemployment............ Add to the Obama's baggage the 'carnival barkers' still carrying his water like Ed Schulz, Olberman, and O'Donnel whose psychotic rants have relegated their shows and ratings into irrelevancy. Joy-Ann needs to wake up and realize what year it is. Like so many others, she owes the nation an apology for her part in foisting the debacle that is Obama on the nation.
I think this proves why the GOP is doomed. It's stupid and uses little graphics that don't make sense because conservatives are simpletons and can't think. Sorry, Americans tried GOP lunacy and they've had enough of it.
So you can't put your money where your mouth is. What a shocker. I'm sure if I said care to put the people's money where your mouth is you would have jumped right in!
Sad but true. Christy is the only credible candidate and will be president, but he knows the gop is a mess right now and would tarnish his brand by associating himself with them on the presidential scale. 2016 is his year. When he runs it won't even be a close second in the gop.
The Democrats took a monstrous loss in 2010. Since then, things have only gotten worse under their leadership.... 2012 is going to be a slaughter. The TEA Party is the force that will bring in more fiscally responsible leadership and hopefully we get a Paul, Cain, or Gingrich type that will force a balanced budget and stop to the entitlement madness.
Yesterday's news. Now people know who they are. "I'm not a witch". This is the Tea Party in all its weirdness! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44mqiBrB0zI"]Songify This - I'M NOT A WITCH - sung by Christine O'Donnell - YouTube[/ame]
Sounds like an Obama schill and a clueless true believer of his incompetent message and has failed to notice that everything Barrack bin Husseini O'Bama has done is a abject failure.
