They just don't get it.
From www.huffingtonpost.com
The White House hit back at Newt Gingrich on Wednesday for a twitter post made by the former House Speaker accusing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor of being a racist.
Playing up the racial aspect of Sotomayor's candidacy is a dangerous proposition for the conservative community, with the risk of offending wide swaths of Hispanics omnipresent. To this point, the charges of reverse-racism have been primarily trumpeted by non-elected officials. But as Greg Sargent pointed out first, the director of new media for the Republican National Committee, Todd Herman, re-tweeted Gingrich's post, bringing the line of attack ever closer to the rank-and-file GOP.
The inability or unwillingness, or just plain stupidity of the GOP to learn from their past mistakes never ceases to amaze me. Mind you, I say "Keep up the good work!". On Sunday, Colin Powell on "Face the Nation" remarked about the party just sitting on it's base as the world passes them by. And this seems to be the case.
The rise to power of the GOP during the 1960's was propelled and achieved by the formidable organizational abilities of both fundamentalist Christians whose goal was a Christian America and angry Southern whites who believed that they had been betrayed by the Democrats in the Democrats aiding and abetting of the civil rights movement. This proved to be a potent admixture of zealotry and resentment which was cleverly manipulated by the Republican party into a nation-wide movement bringing them political victories on the local, state, and federal level. They even managed to swing a substantial number of independent voters to their side by carefully adjusting the level of radical rhetoric to suit each audience.
And for more than thirty years, the GOP kept feeding the base with promises of reform both moral and governmental in America. Promises which were, for the most part, never kept. Yet every election cycle, the GOP plunged back into that pool of voters and emerged victorious once again. That was until the second term of George W. Bush.
Beginning with Bush's re-election in '04, a series of events conspired to pull the plug on that pool and gradually the level of support from independents and some Democrats who had dipped their toes in those now troubled and dark waters. The endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the horrendous images of fellow Americans in dire need and distress in New Orleans, and an economy that was slowly turning sour left them disillusioned and in search of a change of course. The first indication that the GOP was in trouble came with their losses in the 2006 election. Then a new face emerged on the national political scene. Someone who took that simple word "change" and transformed it into one of the most brilliant political campaigns in American history.
And with the stunning defeats the GOP suffered in the House and Senate along with Barack Obama's victory, the Grand Old Party became the late Grand Old Party. The intramural sniping and blame-laying began the day after the November elections. It continues on to this day and has resulted in a once great political party having been reduced to a shadow of its former self. It is a leaderless, rudderless amalgam of bitter-enders and never-say-die zealots. Do not think that the real leaders of the Republican party in the Congress and in numerous state houses are unaware that they are standing on the edge of a precipice below which lies political oblivion. They are well and truly aware.
But they have become so addicted to the siren call of the "base" that, try as they may to break away from it, they always go back for one more hit which falsely promises that it alone can return them to power and that without them the GOP is nothing. After years and years of the "high" they got from the power of the base they are hopelessly trapped in a pattern of self-destruction that no twelve step program in the world can extricate them from. The once robust and vigorous Republican party now stands before us as a dessicated sickly creature with little hope for recovery.