Life inside the Republican bunker....

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Wednesday April 29, 2009 · 6:23 AM PDT

2009/04/29 · 06:23

Dan Bolt writing in today's Washington Post:

How much more can the Republicans take?

The question now is whether Specter's departure will produce a period of genuine introspection by a party already in disarray or result in a circling of the wagons by those who think the GOP is better off without those whose views fall outside its conservative ideological boundaries.

Weighing in on one side yesterday was Rush Limbaugh. "He's not a moderate," Limbaugh said of Specter. "He is a liberal Republican, and this is a natural winnowing process that is taking place.

Steve Schmidt, who was one of Sen. John McCain's top advisers in the 2008 campaign and who recently called on Republicans to consider altering their opposition to same-sex marriage. He said Specter's determination that he had to become a Democrat to continue his career in public service "because his party no longer welcomes him is a pitiful commentary on the state of the party, based on the fact that we continue to shrink when we should focus on trying to grow."

The empirical evidence clearly shows the Republican party is incapable ideologically, philosophically, or, better yet, rationally of digging themselves out of the deep, deep political hole they have dug for themselves. After all of their defeats at the polls in the last two elections, after all the polls showing how unliked they are by the vast majority of Americans, after the latest poll showing that only 21%!...21%! of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, they are still unmoved.

The Republican party has passed into the bunker-mentality phase of their last days as a viable political force in America. The fact of the matter is that they no longer have any sense of political self-preservation but rather are driven solely by the most extreme right wing ideology of those still left standing. It is maniacal. It is incredibly delusional. But most of all, it is suicidal.

I use the expression "bunker mentality" not to compare them in any way, shape, or form to the last days of Hitler and the Third Reich and all that he and his regime represented and did. Rather it is the psychological atmosphere that surrounded the endgame that was being played out in real time in the real world. They believed, no, they had to believe that all was still not lost. That the people would come to their senses and rally to them once again. That somehow the forces bringing them down would somehow be miraculously defeated. And they would defend their goals and philosophies to the bitter end.

The frantic, disoriented, angry, sullen "leaders" of what was once the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower, and Reagan have barricaded themselves inside a mental bunker of their own creation. And it seems that they are prepared to stand firm right up to the point where the Republican party ceases to exist.

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