Saving The Republicans From Themselves

Filed in National by on April 19, 2012

I took a lot of ribbing (some of it good natured, most of it not) that we should rebuild the Delaware Republican Party. My solution was an Open Primary. Charlie Pierce over at Esquire has a better idea:

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone. The state legislators now passing all manner of crazy laws represent the next generation of national Republican leaders. They are proudly unknowing. They are certain, because it is impossible.

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  1. jason330 says:
    April 19, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates…

    In Washington, there is no leadership anymore, no “Republican establishment” to which anyone can appeal. The ferocious strength of faith-based know-nothingism in the party’s base has resulted in a stubborn refusal to adopt even those ideas — like an individual mandate for health care, or cap-and-trade as an energy policy — that began as Republican ideas.

    In the states, we have seen a staggering overreach on the part of Republican governors in the Midwest regarding labor rights, wildly restrictive voter-ID laws aimed at solving a problem that doesn’t exist, immigration statutes that are leaving lettuce to rot in the fields because nobody’s left to pick it, and a welter of preposterous antiabortion statutes. And behind all of that, a party base that has constructed its own private history, its own private language, its own private logic, and its own wholly rounded private universe.

    So refreshing.

  2. jason330 says:
    April 19, 2012 at 3:35 pm

    That was great. Thanks for the link. Sadly, I think this is the crux of the problem though:

    “Since we have determined through the years that we shall have two and only two political parties in this country, the irrationality of one of them is such a grave threat to good governance that the other party has an affirmative obligation to the country to make the irrational party pay such a fearsome price for its indulgent eccentricity that it must reform itself or risk permanent irrelevance. Unfortunately, that task falls to the other creaky vehicle, the Democratic party, which has proven spectacularly ill suited to it.”

    The Democratic Party lacks the leadership and the basic nerve to force the Republicans to pay any price for their lunacy. As Dr. Liberal pointed out, we are an armless, translucent blob.

    Thanks Tom Carper and the DLC!!! Awesome work!

  3. Steve Newton says:
    April 19, 2012 at 10:09 pm

    jason

    The problem with that last piece of analysis is this: in the 1850s the Whig Party dissolved and the Republican Party was born (and managed to capture the White House in its second try).

    Meanwhile the Dems fractured in 1860 and had two nominees, but got their shit back together within 4-6 years.

    That’s kind of what you are talking about. The problem today is that between Citizens United, unlimited soft money, Federal campaign funds (being designated by party), and ballot limitations, the GOP and the Dems have officially entered the category of “Too Big Too Fail.”

    GOPers do not have to win major national elections for the whole process to be insanely profitable for a few.

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