G.laringly O.bsolete P.achyderms

By Cernig

I take it as a given that any party-based system of democracy needs a healthy and viable opposition to stop the party in power getting too big for its boots and inevitably heading down the path of hubris towards results that aren't good for democracy. It's a pattern we've seen in the UK with the conservative years that began with Thatcher and with the social democrat years begun in turn by Blair. In the U.S., you've had something not dissimiliar - perhaps now to be perpetuated by Obama following in Blair's footsteps.

However (just like UK conservatives did after Thatcher and Major) the traditional home of U.S. conservatives, the Republican Party, seems intent on making itself as non-viable as possible for the forseeable future. Ted Nugent speaks for the not-so-silent minority of angry Republicans:

Consensus building is for wimps and soulless people who stand for nothing. Compromise is not about being tolerant: these days, it’s about giving up conservative principles.

...Conservative leaders and thinkers such as Newt Gingrich, Jed Babbin, Governor Jindal of Louisiana, Thomas Sowell, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, Governor Sarah Palin and others need to turn up the heat and bring this less government, more individual freedom and strong national defense revolution to a boil. It is time.

My specialty is making Fedzilla punks squirm and turn into a puddle of sweat and drool. Therefore, in the spirit of famous butt kickers Generals Chesty Puller and George Patton, I say we launch an attack on all fronts. Uncle Ted hereby declares it is open season on RINOs. No bag limits or permits required. Conservative ideas, arguments and votes are the weapons we will use. Hunt them down and shine a blazing light on these RINO turncoat cockroaches. Zero in the "we the people" crosshairs of your voting assault weapon and aim for the RINO pumpstation. Double tap center mass. Whack em and stack em, track em and hack em, pack em and give em no slack. Let's do to the RINO beasts what we did to the passenger pigeon. Force out of the Republican Party out the subspecies known as RINOs.

Thus do the dinosaurs ignore their coming nadir, by impugning the adaptability of those pesky omnivourous mammals, neither carnivore nor herbivore but some unholy combinbation of both. It's a theme that other hardline "thinkers" of the right - like Malkin, Palin and Beck - have been plenty vocal about too.

And, all schaudenfreude aside, it's going to be a disaster not only for the G.O.P. but for America at large. If Obama doesn't follow Blair down the path of over-reach and broken promises (simply because, well, he'll get re-elected anyway without a viable alternative) then his Democratic successors in the Oval Office will. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, in an NYT op-ed today, sets out how UK conservatives spent their time in the wilderness and how they found their way back.

Mr. Cameron’s candidacy was built on a simple premise: modernize or die. He told the Tories they had to look as if they actually liked the country they sought to govern, rather than wishing they could turn back time. They could not hope to form a winning coalition without appealing to the Britons whom Mr. Blair had made his own: women, suburbanites, the highly educated. Relying on angry old white men was never going to get the Conservatives much beyond 33 percent.

To that end, Mr. Cameron set about decontaminating the Tory brand. Central to that mission were forays into two areas of political terrain previously deemed forbidden zones. First, he signaled comfort with gay rights, ditching the party’s previous support for laws restricting sexual equality. Second, he championed environmentalism.

It remains to be seen whether the G.O.P. will be the vehicle for an eventual US conservative comeback. It's quite possible that it will atrophy and die under the direction of the American hard right's neocons and theocons - far more virulent than their British counterparts ever were. But if so, then some other party will be the conservative party, with a vastly reduced extremist influence, and the right will eventually regain at least parity with the left again. By then, that will be a good thing.

Comments

[anderson]

It's rather amusing that the Nuge would cited the wholesale extinction of the passenger pigeon as his model of RINO extermination, like he's kind of proud of it.

[Don SinFalta]

But if so, then some other party will be the conservative party, with a vastly reduced extremist influence, and the right will eventually regain at least parity with the left again.

You seem to be implying that the Democratic Party has something to do with "the left" here. Why would you think that? Obama is the consummate bipartisan centrist. He may lean leftish, but it's not a very pronounced lean despite what Jabba the Rush and his ilk may think. The Democratic Congress is further right than it was before, back when it was very good at supporting things like the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, telecom immunity, etc. It's on the verge of not even slapping Lieberman on the wrist for his outrageous behavior in the election and looks very likely to completely fail to hold any part of the Bush administration accountable for their historically disastrous and probably felonious behavior. They're fully on board with dumping another trillion dollars of middle class tax money into the massive giveaway pot for failed plutocrats. I guess overall I'd say that if the GOP actually does atrophy away, the right will at that point have achieved near parity with the left.

[John]

Nice piece Cernig. Essentially correct on all counts. The UK analogy is probably correct as well as the rest of the ideas presented, but simply because we never seem to get the ideal solution when an opportunity presents itself. The ideal solution, IMHO, is for the Republican Party to cease to exist, and for the Blue Dog Democrats to split off from the larger Democratic Party to become the new conservative party. IMO the Republican Party has become too toxic to continue to exist. When they finally make the comeback that you suggest I am afraid that they will simply learn from their mistakes of the recent past and simply become more competent rather than less evil. When the Democrats get lazy and corrupt and the clueless American public gets fed up we will then get the Machiavellians back. The next time we may not be as lucky as we were on this go round. We may get a full-blown economic depression, civil unrest, and totalitarianism. Remember that conditions that led to the breakdown of the Weimar Republic in pre-Nazi Germany are very easy to duplicate here. These people (GOP) are extremely dangerous, and need to go the way of the Whigs in 1856, albeit for an entirely different reason.