David Frum, in one single paragraph, sums up the state and future of the Republican party. And it ain't good.
From www.theweek.com
We are gradually shrinking from our former ambition—to govern—and taking our pleasure instead in alienation and complaint. Those journalists who cover the conservative world are surprised by how relieved and happy conservatives seem to be about having lost the 2008 election. No more irritating compromises, no more boring policy debates! We can recline into the pure assertion of conservative dogma, a job nobody does better than Rush Limbaugh himself. As Limbaugh told the CPAC crowd: We need no new policy ideas. Conservatism, he said, cannot be reshaped or reformed, and those who suggest otherwise must be "stamped out."
The right wing base of the Republican Party is now officially brain dead. It has transmogrified into one of it's most notorious causes, the Terri Schiavo circus. And like that wretched poor soul, it's semblance of "life" is totally dependent on artificial means. The parallels between the two are striking in their similarity.
In both cases, denial was the underlying cause of the interminably prolonged final resolution. The defenders of both continued to argue for years that the damage that each had suffered was not, as most experts had said, irreversible. They took every little twitch, tic, spasm, or involuntary reflex as signs of eventual recovery and return to normal life. But in both cases it was nothing more than wishful thinking.
And as the days turned into months and months turned into years, gradually the number of true believers drifted away to move on with their own lives. Those left standing at the bitter end were only the truest of true believers. And eventually there was only one voice that rose above the calls for ending the sideshow. In the Schiavo case it was the self-serving Randall Terry. And in the right wing's, it is Rush Limbaugh. I find that to be the most ironic of the similarities.
At the very end, the last defenders of both lost causes were carnival snake oil salesmen. Both telling the last of the faithful what they wanted to hear. And both in it only for the money and their own aggrandizement.
RIP, Terri Schiavo.