Republicans Reaping What They’ve Sown – And It Ain’t Pretty
I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he’s got this one right.
All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.
But where have these party leaders been over the past five years, when all the forces that distort the G.O.P. were metastasizing? Where were they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the possibility of budget compromise? They were lying low, hoping the unpleasantness would pass.
Unfortunately for Brooks and his fellow conservatives, it’s a little late to be grumbling now. The current state of Republican decadence has been decades in the making going back to Reagan. It built up steam under the presidency of the hapless George W. and maxed out at crazy stupid with the election of Barack Obama.
Now that Republicans have successfully alienated immigrants, Hispanics, non-Christians, minorities and women, there aren’t enough millionaires and 65 year old dumb white guys to keep the GOP off life support for too much longer. The party of the Koch brothers, Limbaugh and Fox News are now reaping what they’ve sown for all these years.
Republicans are running a pathetic clown show and they have only themselves to blame because…
Leaders of a party are supposed to educate the party, to police against its worst indulgences, to guard against insular information loops. They’re supposed to define a creed and establish boundaries. Republican leaders haven’t done that.
