Looking at the events of the last week, it's hard to avoid a little schadenfreude at the expense of the GOP. Republicans are baffled, embarrassed, stymied, upset and generally depressed about a wide array of issues ranging from division within their party to the CNN/YouTube debate, to their current presidential frontrunner's sexual-escapades-at-taxpayer-expense scandals.
It's almost enough to make one feel sorry for them--if they hadn't done it all to themselves. Republicans have been the masters of their own undoing on these and other issues not only by being just generally venal and corrupt, but also by creating the conditions under which they were guaranteed to suffer. It's almost like watching an Ancient Greek tragedy in slow motion, playing out on a variety of fronts.
First, we have Republican fury over the CNN/YouTube debate. Republicans are upset at what they feel were a large number of "gotcha" questions from Democratic-leaning questioners, and feel that the debate avoided substantive issues like education, healthcare and economy. Together with RedState.com, rightist Human Events is calling for a do-over of the debate that Republicans felt made them look so bad in front of a record 5 million American viewers. But even taking GOP objections to the debate at face value, it's worth pointing out that Republicans did this to themselves. It was Republican policies that led to corporate consolidation of the media. It was Republican policies that insisted the media be about making a profit through sensationalism rather than substantive reporting on the issues. It was Republican "gotcha" politics that created a focus on the trivial politics of personal destruction. It was Republicans who cherished distractions from vital issues to those of side issues like gay marriage. If Republicans found themselves on the wrong side of a profit-driven media disinclined to fact-check and insistent on bringing up petty side issues like the confederate flag and gays in the military instead of education and healthcare, they have only themselves to blame. It's their dragon. They raised it and fed it. Time for them to slay it.
The same thing goes for Rudy Giuliani. He claims that the attention being given to his "Sex-on-the-City" scandal is a hit job, a manufactured scandal pushed by a political opponent to hurt him at the polls. Of course, the fact that Rudy fails to deny any of the allegations, including that his then-mistress made the police walk her dog, is not my point--though it is damning. But let's take the honorable Mayor at his word and assume it's a salacious sex-and-money mudfest. Well, it was Republicans, after all, who went so far as to impeach the President of the United States over a blowjob, and railed endlessly about Bill Clinton's supposedly demoralizing abuse of the secret service to help him in his sexual peccadilloes. It was Republicans who chose to make politics about the tawdry rather than the substantive. So if Rudy's campaign crashes and burns on scandals or even indictments stemming from this tawdry incident, they have only themselves to blame. This is the politics they created, the politics they asked for.
The same goes for the problems of their other frontrunner who actually leads or is tied in Iowa and New Hampshire, Mitt Romney. Governor Mitt is suffering from four crucial problems that make him anathema to many Republicans:
- He's from Massachusetts
- He's been slightly less than rabidly hateful towards undocumented immigrants, gays, women, and children without health insurance
- He's a flip-flopper
- He's a Mormon
Democrats--as well as many conservatives--will be sure to remind Republican voters of these uncomfortable facts throughout the Republican primary and, should Mitt win, the general election as well. All of which stands to reason, as it was Republicans who created an environment that demonized compassionate flip-floppers from Massachussetts with less than stellar religious credentials. The ironic contrapasso for Republicans is nothing short of delicious. Republicans seem likely to run a candidate for President so strikingly similar in many ways to the one they vilified in the last election, it's almost eerie. I'd almost feel sorry for them--if they hadn't done it to themselves.
Finally, there's the divide over the immigration issue. It was painful to watch the reaction of Mike Huckabee and John McCain during the CNN/YouTube debate as the rest of the Republicans attempted to one-up each other on who hated brown people more. Almost as painful, in fact, as watching Karl Rove and George Bush go up against their party in attempting--and failing--to pass an "amnesty bill" over the dead body of the GOP Congress last year. The GOP, of course, is in a bind: Hispanics comprise 15% of the nation's population, and will comprise 24% of the nation's population by 2050. The Republicans will be toast in 2008 without Hispanic votes from the Southwest--but on the other hand, they will also be toast without the votes from their racist wingnut base. What to do? I don't know what I would advise them were I a Republican strategist, but I don't really care: after all, they've done this to themselves. It is Republicans who have courted the basest, foulest elements and instincts in society at the expense of vulnerable minorities, and now the chickens have come home to roost.
Personally, I'm enjoying watching them flail in an environment replete with a complacent, self-serving media, a national focus on tawdry sex scandals, a rejection of Massachusetts flip-floppers, and a divided nation exploited by the Southern Strategy.
After all, they've done it to themselves.