Quote:“America’s in the middle of a real political storm — a real tsunami — and we should have seen this coming.” – Marco Rubio


It was always inevitable, I suppose. The Republican Party has debased itself for decades – courting racists, placating religious lunatics, and using the culture wars as a political wedge. Candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin are natural outgrowths of this conservative ecosystem; they’re exactly what you’d expect it to produce.

This is the climate Republicans have cultivated, and what we’re seeing now is the logical conclusion of those efforts.

The GOP establishment continues to eat itself from within, as officials scramble to make sense of it all. You might call it an identity crisis of sorts. Longtime Republicans are now questioning the party’s broader strategy. Here’s Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal:

Quote:“Liberals may have been fond of claiming that Republicans were all closet bigots and that tax cuts were a form of racial prejudice, but the accusation rang hollow because the evidence for it was so tendentious. Not anymore. The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism…It would be terrible to think that the left was right about the right all these years.”

Terrible indeed, but no less true. Here’s a similar Tweet by Max Boot, a neoconservative hawk and prominent Republican intellectual: “I’m a lifelong Republican but Trump surge proves that every bad Democrats have ever said about GOP is basically true.” Welcome to the club, Max. Happy to have you.

In addition to embracing the worst elements of its base, the GOP also blundered in its strategic decision to cede the business of governing to Democrats and focus instead on obstructing President Obama. “Our top political priority over the next two years,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell famously said in 2012, “should be to deny President Obama a second term.”

One of the less incoherent objections Trumpites raise against the Republican Party is that it hasn’t delivered on any of its promises. Legislatively, the GOP has been virtually useless. Election after election, session after session, Republicans have failed to pass any meaningful pieces of legislation, which is what happens when compromise becomes a heresy in your party.

The GOP’s stated strategy – at least since Obama was elected – has been to create gridlock, to make the country ungovernable. Recall how they used the nation’s credit rating to blackmail the opposing party, not to accomplish anything but to score points with their purist base. And just this week, we have the nihilsm of a Republican senate, led by McConnell, refusing to do its job and consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination. The bogus talking point is that the people’s voice ought to be heard before choosing a new Justice. But the people already spoke in the last election, when they gave Obama a second term. But that doesn’t matter because McConnell is hostage to the Tea Party reactionaries that dominate the Republican-led Congress. This is the kind of bureaucratic inertia Americans are rejecting.


In their bottomless cynicism, Republicans have tried to break the government so that they could then reproach the Democrats for ruining it. This worked temporarily, but it was bound to backfire at some point.

Now something like 87 percent of the country disapproves of the job Congress is doing. Republicans wagered that the country would blame Obama for the mess they manufactured. Instead, their base is – rightly – blaming the GOP establishment, and Donald Trump is delivering the message. Trump voters hate Obama, of course, but not nearly as much as they do their own party.

The GOP committed itself to grievance politics and a strategy of political arson years ago. Had they gone another way, had they been serious about the difficult work of governance, Donald Trump would not have devoured their party this cycle. Once again, he’s their Frankenstein, and no one in the party can stop him.

Our only hope is that the Democrats will.

(03-17-2016, 12:46 PM)GMDino Wrote: I don't know if this should go in the Trump/racist thread or the KKK/Hillary thread or the Mega Tuesday thread.

So it will start as its own.  Feel free to move it.

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/17/the_rights_shocking_admission_stunned_by_trumps_dominance_some_gop_pundits_concede_that_dems_have_been_right_about_republicans_all_along/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

(03-17-2016, 01:18 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Trump is proof that tax cuts are a form of racial prejudice.  I've never actually even heard anyone make that claim, and yet we have proof of it.  I've heard them say it goes against the poor.  Unless.  No couldn't be.  Maybe?  Democrats equate poor with black?  Nah.  Right?

(03-17-2016, 01:22 PM)GMDino Wrote: I think the media tend to think poor = black even though you are correct that poor = everyone.

The rest of the article discussing how even those on the right see Drumpf as a bad thing is telling though.

(03-17-2016, 01:24 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Well how do they see it's a bad thing, but are also proof that the Republican Party are racist bigots?

(03-17-2016, 01:27 PM)GMDino Wrote: I'm guessing that will depend on how many vote for the bigot/racist when he get the nomination?

(03-17-2016, 01:30 PM)michaelsean Wrote: 69 million in 2008 and 66 million in 2012.  It's easy enough to google.

(03-17-2016, 01:35 PM)GMDino Wrote: I didn't think the GOP got that many votes in those years.  

(03-17-2016, 01:37 PM)michaelsean Wrote: They did not.  (We could do this for a while)

(03-17-2016, 01:38 PM)GMDino Wrote: I knew what you meant.  I just didn't care.  

(03-17-2016, 01:27 PM)michaelsean Wrote: I don't think people quite understand the Trump voter.  They really don't hear what he is saying.  They hear how he is saying it.  I know several.  You really can't connect the moronic things he says to the reasons they are voting for him.  He is going against the establishment and he ain't taking no shit.  That's what they see.

(03-17-2016, 02:19 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Actually MOST people completely understand the Trump voter.  We all know that they don't care if he is blatantly lying.  And thatb is what scares us all so much.

How the hell can you support a guy for President when you can't believe a thing he says?  

(03-18-2016, 12:53 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Quire honestly, could a Trump presidency be worse than W's shitstorm?  After all, I could almost virtually guarantee Trump would not involve us in a war under deliberately false pretenses that cost us trillions of dollars.

(03-17-2016, 12:46 PM)GMDino Wrote: I don't know if this should go in the Trump/racist thread or the KKK/Hillary thread or the Mega Tuesday thread.

So it will start as its own.  Feel free to move it.

(03-18-2016, 12:53 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Quire honestly, could a Trump presidency be worse than W's shitstorm?  After all, I could almost virtually guarantee Trump would not involve us in a war under deliberately false pretenses that cost us trillions of dollars.

(03-18-2016, 01:42 AM)wildcats forever Wrote: Bush did have the help of Cheney, Rumsfeld etc, so if Trump could manage to avoid surrounding himself with the likes of them I can imagine it being somewhat better. That's not saying much though. 

I have no idea what a Trump presidency would be like because of the BS he's slinging now. Who knows what he's really thinking on the issues? Does he even know? If he actually could stop involving us in these needless Middle Eastern wars, that would be a major plus. AND if he could effect a positive change in trade agreements that would result in ultimately getting some of our lost industry back on our shores, he would damn near become a hero. Again though, who knows what he would do, or how he would do it.