The GOP's addiction to the politics of division has evolved into a "circular firing squad" pitting moderates against the "value-voters" that represent the GOP base. In the words of Tony Blankley-"Its a guilty pleasure but fun to watch."
As a prima facie case its pretty clear to most that the conservative wing of the GOP is in its final death throes; clear to everybody but conservatives who are not only attempting to bend logic but space and time itself in order to force the few "sheeple" left in the country to see it from their perspective.
Over the last two years I became and advid reader of a variety of right wing blogs(Townhall, Weekly Standard, Red State, Michelle Malkin, and of course Drudge) because I really felt it was important to know what the mindset of our opponent was. My research tells me that we are looking at a good news/bad news construction.
Conservatism may be on the way out; the question is how much damage they will cause as they depart the politcal scene? The answer in the short term is things will get worse before they get better.
Let us first recall the angst filled days of the primary season when the popular GOP meme was the divisions in the "Democrat" party will tear the liberals apart-Hillary Clinton is waiting in the trees to devour the field mouse like Barack Obama. Fun times right? Well if nothing else its showed us that the GOP had a blind spot; the huge almost irreparable divisons in their own house.
PRIMARIES: THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
It really was wonderful politcal theatre watching Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giliani, and John McCain using Rove like strategies against not only their democratic opponents but on each other as well. I really enjoyed it when McCain attacked Romney over wanting a "timeline" for withdraw-McCain didn't question old Mitt's patriotism though-that is an attack reserved solely for use against democrats. Frankly when you look at the rogue's gallery of GOP nominees its pretty clear how McCain won the nomination- at one point and time he represented the the most moderate element in the GOP-something the far right has always openly loathed him for but as they say you have to dance with who brought you to the barn. The fact is we could see how the the GOP divisions were going to cost them the election-Mitt Romney a polished CEO type striaght out of GOP central casting was deemed to liberal for flip flopping on key conservative issues like Health care and abortion(Nice how the flip flop strategy of 2004 came back like a boomerang)and add a heafty dose of Mormonism and Mitt was out sixty million of his own money. In the words of "Politcal Insider Dick Morris" evangelicals would never vote for Romney. Strike One. "America's Mayor" Rudy G. was an early Fox News favorite despite having never won a single state in the primary. Rudy 's game plan was to keep losing until the miracle of fairy dust sprinkled over Florida would put him back in the running. We all know how that turned out-Rudy too was a flip flopper and spent too much time in dresses according to several right wing blogs. Strike Two. Mike Huckabee's charming wit and highly prized Chuck Norris endorsement gave him an edge with evangelicals but his populist nature ran him afoul with Grover Norquist and his anti-tax mavens and if there is one things conservatives love to rail on about its taxation!Huckabee was in the process of fouling when the GOP electorate decided their best chance was the Maverick himself. In the end moderate McCain rose from the ashes of his shoestring campaign and became the de facto rallying point for the GOP fundraising efforts. In my mind none of the the candidate above represented any kind of pure right wing conservative ideology-sure they appealed to conservatives as much as the could but frankly the base just wasn't excited about any of them. Social Conservatism in its purest form seemed to be nowhere on the menu.
Which brings me to Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancreado arguably the most conservative candidates and strangely enough the guys who got knocked out of the race early on. One night on Hannity and Colmes the odious Ann Coulter proclaimed that Duncan Hunter was her choice for the POTUS. I knew then and there that things were looking up for progressives. After eight years of Bush style compasssionate conservatism it seemed that if nothing else there would be a large element of american society who were fed up with the sham the Bush admin had pulled on them. Bush's approval raiting in the mid twenties showed that not just liberals had enough of GWB; the truth is conservatives were angry that Bush wasn't conservative enough and had in fact turned out to be what they call a RINO(Republican in name only) at best or even more frightening a CINO(conservative in name only). To the far right Bush caved on immigration, Global Warming, and in the end to the Democrats over the economy. But to the twenty of so percent of the country that thought Bush was the greatest POTUS ever a discussion of any of his faults during the primary season were conserdered out of school. Karl Rove said early on that those who do not give Bush his proper due would pay a heavy price. Of course that tune changed after Obama's campaign brilliantly tied McCain to the anchor already around the Bush admin's neck. The bottom line here is that there were definte signs during the priamry that a conservative message was not going to win the day.
HEAD TO HEAD: DEFINED BY CHARACTER NOT DOGMA
When McCain and Obama started attacking each other in earnest it became clear very early on that McCain was not going to always give the answers that conservatives wanted to hear. Some accounts showed McCain had flipped on some 70 different issues(See Thinkprogress.com) but he still wasn't singing the right tune for the GOP base. McCain's stance on global warming was an annoyance to the far right but his role in the immigration bill was simply and unforgivable act to most conservative partisans. McCain certainly had a long history of bucking his party and poking conservatives in the and you could see Sean Hannity flinch everytime McCain spoke of bi-partisanship in Washington DC. Perhaps it was then that campaign manager Steve Davis decided to make the race about Obama's character instead of actual issues and dogma based solutions. Davuis even went as far as to let himself be quoted as saying that Camp McCain was going to run on personality.This way McCain didn't have to feel shocked to the far right and could concetrate on painting Obama as socialist radical who was friends was terrorists and let babies die after botched abortions. Sadly this old smear and fear Rove paradigm may have worked if not for two key elements: the economic meltdown and the coming of Sarah Palin.
THE PALIN FACTOR: LIPSTICK, PIGS, AND JOE THE PLUMBER
The Palin choice for VP was in my estimation one of the most cynical political moves since the Clinton Impeachment. Did McCain and his staff really think that 16 million allegedly diaffected Hillary voters were going to flock to the down home hockey mom from Wasilla? More importantly they felt they could take somebody with virtually no experience on the national stage and turn her into cinderella overnight. This did not come to pass as even now Palin's interviews-even the sypathetic ones on Fox-do little to erase the stigma of her utter failure. I guess in some corner of reality DAvis's logic for wanting Palin was sound-if you want to win a personality contest you get yourself a beauty pagent queen who's been through a few. Rove and Co felt that if McCain had picked Lieberman or Tom Ridge the base would have revolted as neither of them could have passed the varrious ideological GOP litmus tests. Rove even tried to deep six Palin from afar by implying that if Obama chose one term VA governor Tim Kain that he would be making a political decision instead of a governing one-much to his dismay McCain stepped into the trap anyways. And this my freinds is where things get juicy. You see the GOP base after nearly two years of non-stop scandals, failures, and repudiations finally got one of their own on the national stage and they were prepared to support her come hell or highwater. The GOP base might have been lukewarm about McCain but they just couldn't get enough of Palin and the Tony Perkins and Henry Dobsons saw her, not McCain, as their conduit to the executive office. Palin signed up for the double maberick tour and learned her stump speech(the same one used at the GOP governors convention last week-another indication of her puppet like nature)and his the road decrying the very Washington elites that got her the job in the first place. In fact if it wasn't for the boundless stupidty of William Kristol we might never have endured the strain that Palin put on out collectives psyches. Palin and co-conspirator Joe the Plumber attempted to further dumb down the national discourse by cellbrating the common man and eschewing the coastal elilites. Yes they looked great on film but most Americans don't go to plumbers of soccer moms for economic advice. No offense to either catagory but but frankly I am humble enough to realize that sometimes you need Ivy league trained economists to help out with the delicacies of marco-economics. A celebration of the "intellectually incurious" was not going to win an election in a time of crisis. The base sure loved Sarah's down home platitudes but the moderates of the party rejected her almost immediately. I think it can be taken as fact that McCain always had the support of the GOP base, where else where they going to go? But McCain decided that Palin would not only solidfy his hold on the base but attract moderate democrats and independents as well. This of course proved to be wrong as independents saw the "Palin Haily Mary Play" as just another card in the deck of identity politics. Progressives on the other hand owe a great deal to Palin as her ascention in the GOP is a clear sign that the divisions in the GOP are growing not shrinking.
STILL A CENTER RIGHT NATION?
If ignorance is bliss than the GOP are in the full grasp of delusion combined with a lack of introspection that is brewing up to be toxic cocktail that everybody in the GOP is going to be forced to drink.
The day after the election we began to see the "still a center right nation" meme manifest itself as a full blown virus as conservatives tried to run away from their defeat by imply an Obama victory was hardly a repudiation of conservatism-Obama's election in their eyes was a rebuke against moderates like McCain and those who hadn't embraced the far right social dogma of the far right. The GOP was the problem, not conservatism as a philosophy, or so they would have us believe. Think of it this way; of the twenty or so percent of conservatives pleased with the job performance of GWB nearly sixty percent of those polled felt that Palin would be a great choice in 2012. These peope represent the die hard red baiting GOP partisans who stil haven't quite figured out the message or simply won't admit they have ever been wrong on anything. And suprsingly enought these are exacty the people we want running the GOP. If push comes to shove let the the Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, Laura Ingrahams, Amanda Carpenters, and Michelle Malkins chart the course for the future of the GOP. The more intellectually dishonest the better for the rest of us-the last election has shown us exactly how effective their brand of partisanship has been and now the Democrats know exactly how to defuse and disorient them.One of the best moment in the ccampaign was when Obama tied McCain to Limbaugh's immigration stance. This was a pretty clever end run considering McCain and Limbaugh detest one another and that McCain really was opposed to Limbaugh's views but it drew Limbaugh out into writing an op-ed for WSJ saying Obama was fanning the flames of racism. McCain did not back limbaugh up and his scurrilous litte voice was lost in the wilderness. Let's see how the shouters of the far right stand up to the elite opines of Kathleen Paker, David Brooks, and Charles Krauthammer. Frankly this is the fight I have been waiting to see for some time. I think even some money could be made on pay for view on this one.
BURNING THE LIQOUR STORE DOWN
Michael"I hate D&D" Goldfarb formerly of Camp McCain and now back to his day job at the weekly standard has produced this excellent piece of spin/excerment about porgressives in the new admin....
"What is clear is that the split between realists and neoconservatives has been resolved, for the time being, in favor of the realists, whose titular leader, Colin Powell, endorsed Obama at the end of the campaign. Over the last eight years this split produced some genuine personal animosity between the two camps, and, in fact, it may have been personal animosity more than anything else that drove Powell away from McCain and into the arms of Obama. So what had been an intra-Republican fight has now led the realists to take refuge in an ascendant Democratic party.
But the real losers here seem to be progressives. If progressives can't get their foot in the door on national security in an Obama administration, it's difficult to imagine precisely what conditions would bring them to power, since we are unlikely to see a more liberal president for decades."
What's truly rwemarkable about this piece is the Goldfarb A. trying to declare the war inside the GOP over-it isn't and B. saying that progressives are the real losers because of the Clinton pick as SOS. Of course Conservatives simply cannot stand the fact that the Democratic field of candidates was so strong that any onbe of them merits a position in the new administration while clearly the same could not be said about the GOP. Its pretty unlikely that McCain would have chosen Romney as Comerce sec or Rudy G. as Sec Def. I think Michael knows who the real losers are and it ain't progressives as he would have you believe.
The state of the union is as such; the GOP was soundly defeated, their tactics repudiated, and their candidtes sent back to the showers with no real leadership anywhere in sight. If former MD Lt. Governor Michael Steel becomes the RNC chair progressive can breath easy as not unlike the GOP house leadership the Grand old party has decided to double down on the politcs of failure. Obama would do well to work with as may GOP moderates as he can and keep the far right idealogues out in the cold; if he can find a way to help moderate the gOP from the inside he will be doing his part to contain the evntual damge they will cause when conservatives realize that their time has come and like most everything else in life learn that moderation is not such a bad thing. Until that day happens purchase some popcorn or a fine wine and enjoy the show.