Exasperation With The GOP

There is so much good writing coming out now about the problems of the GOP it will take librarians to sort through it all.

First, there is this article, talking about all the things that should be happening, but aren't:

So broken are the information outlets Tea Partiers in particular use to assess reality that for months they took Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich seriously as potential or actual presidential contenders. They had every opportunity to see the respective character flaws of these figures; they were mostly self-evident, and persuasively described in great detail by the political press. Ah, but that's the liberal media talking. With that phrase, any huckster can short-circuit the Tea Party reality-assessing apparatus for months. And while movement conservatism has failed for decades to shrink government, it has succeeded spectacularly in creating jobs for hucksters in the private sector.

...On the right today, they are so numerous, prominent and shameless, their pathologies so ingrained in right-wing media and politics, their wealth so corrupting to young talent, and their pathologies so seldom challenged by those who know better, that Republicans are operating at a persistent information disadvantage. (Too many believe even their own bullshit.) The Bush Administration showed that it's possible to win at the ballot box anyway -- but that the victory isn't worth much, save an ill-conceived war in the desert, exploding deficits, and a financial crisis.

Then this article notes something new in this year's campaign, and maybe even hopeful about the future (if not mismanaged, like it was in the 1930's, and almost certainly will be this time too):

McCain, speaking on his 76th birthday, all but apologized for bringing up the subject in the first place: “It is said that this election will turn on domestic and economic issues. But what Mitt Romney knows, and what we know, is, is”—he stumbled over the words, nervous, like he knew he was entering the lion’s den—“that our success at home also depends on our leadership in the world.” The crowd’s tepid response suggested they did not know that at all.

Soaring rhetoric about “our willingness to shape world events,” leading “shoulder to shoulder with steadfast friends and allies,” “giving voice to the voiceless, insisting that every human life has dignity,” got little reaction; McCain only coaxed real noise out of the crowd through references to the sacrifices of the troops, gratuitous slams on Obama and mentions of the glories of supporting Israel. His call to “renew the foundations of our power and leadership in the world” sounded like an applause line—but it got no applause. Likewise, “By committing to withdraw from Afghanistan before peace can be achieved and sustained, our president has discouraged our friends and emboldened our enemies.” By the time he got to “In other times, when other courageous people fought for their freedom against sworn enemies of the United States, American presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, have acted to help them prevail,” I felt like the crowd thought this old man would ramble on forever. McCain seemed to sense it, too. “An American president always, always, always stands up for the rights, and freedoms, and justice, of all people,” he said. You only repeat a word three times when you fear people aren’t going to hear it.

...So what happened? The Republicans used to love their wars so lustily! Don’t call the change “moderation”: given that the crowd’s indifference was in response to calls to mitigate human suffering, it better resembled the morally indifferent isolationism of the late 1930s and early ’40s, when the right opposed rearming the nation to fight Hitler.

And maybe the GOP doesn't even have the will to rule:

So even if he’s sputtering out now, Mitt nevertheless has the best of both worlds: he has vindicated his father before the people who count, and he wouldn’t have to actually govern. He can avoid the years of “gaffes” and words “not elegantly stated” and “you people” prying into his finances that his presidency would surely entail. And as Michelle Obama said: the office doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.

Anyway, Romney’s nomination has already done something very real for one of the few American institutions he truly seems to care about: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He helped to finally establish Mormonism as a legitimate part of the Republican Party hierarchy, not to mention American political history. Maybe he won’t be invited to speak at the 2016 GOP convention, but he did get Christians to at least nominally accept his once-persecuted faith.