My longtime line in political arguments was always "The Republican party is the party of rich, white males. If you make over $100K a year and are a white male I understand voting Republican, otherwise it's crazy."
About 1985 I added "If you make over $100K a year and are a white Christian male, go ahead and vote GOP."
But now? Now! Even if you're a white, male, Christian, Wall Street 1%er - the only people the GOP's policies do anything for, you are CRAZY to vote Republican. Period! PERIOD!!
The so-called Grand Old Party (which is younger than the Democratic Party, so how in hell did they ever get that stupid nickname to stick?) has gone so far off the edge of the ideological world as to be rendered ridiculous. They've so renounced practical, utilitarian governmental management for partisan think tank generated powergrab nonsense that the only possible healthy denouement for that party is for them to dis-a-ppear.
The Republican Party can and must go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs so that we can get a responsible second party in our two party system. Nevermind a third party - wouldn't help right now unless it rendered Republicans irrelevent.
We need a responsible second party to parry with the Democrats and you cannot look to anybody in the Republican party to be the spokesmen and bulwarks of a moderate, responsible, thinking party. That horse has left the barn, burned it down and built a Walmart on top of it. Christie Todd Whitman's It's My Party, Too The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America was an ineffectual mealy-mouthed failure. A few of her likeminded GOP ex-officeholders mewled against the radical takeover of the party, but could muster no actual resistence. The Olympia Snowes and Susan Collinses have gone along to get along, retired or been primaried out of existence and were truly the walking dead in their own party way before they realized it.
When I was a kid there were moderate and even progressive Republicans in the East, West and Midwest like Rockefeller, Javits, Ribikoff, Weicker, Heinz and many others who got into public service because they were called, like Democrats to serve. They were in government to make it work for people, they never said they don't believe in government. That came with the nihilism of Goldwater, Schlafly and the Southern Strategy. As well documented in many books like Rick Perlstein's awesome "Nixonland", and the observations of the prescient Richard Hufstader in "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" the reactionary elements in the country rallied behind Goldwater and the new racially retrograde Republican Party created by the incorporation of the Dixiecrats and the Southern Strategy. Birchites and Klanners adopted the GOP and the wealthy wingnuts took to funding the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, ALEC and hundreds of other right wing think tanks and organizations to create the conservative industry that we know today.
The think tanks strategized the takeover of the country by the incremental movement of the debate ever rightward. They took over talk radio in the 80s. Added Fox News in the 90s and organized, organized, organized. First to take over the Republican Party, but over all to influence the country towards their philosophy - both social and economic/political.
And let me be clear, while they fight a losing battle socially (because their 19th century morality is spitting into the wind of the inexorable social movement towards justice, equality and tolerance) they have absolutely won on the economics and politics despite being absolutely wrong headed and intellectually bankrupt on the issues. Over 30 years while we keep putting out brushfires on abortion and ludicrous school board battes over teaching evolution, they have decimated unions, defunded governments and enriched the already wealthy with tax-cutting schemes that are nothing less than money laundering efforts to direct money that should have gone into the treasury into the RNC, SuperPACS and the coffers of individual Republican candidates. Does anybody really doubt that the real reason for 12.5% of the Bush tax cuts to go to .1% of the country was to funnel that money to Republican campaigns? Citizens United just opened the floodgates on that.
Let's do a thought experiment. What if the people who came out and voted in 2006 and 2008 and gave the Republicans resounding ass thumpings handing the Democrats the House, Senate and the White House had also come out in 2010? The Republicans would have taken a third straight thumping and maybe Christie Whitman could have gotten an audience. But no it didn't happen.
In any other political reality, ever, if a party gets truly knocked around twice in a row they would have moderated, come to the middle and restrategized. (We have watched as Democrats have been constantly admonished to moderate even when they win! Even as they show moderation in their moderateness they keep getting told to not be extreme.) What actually happened after 2008 was the Republican party doubling down on their most immoderate tendencies. The most hard core, bitter, Sarah Palin/Rush Limbaugh right saw the loss to a black man and went into freak out hyperdrive. They called themselves the Tea Party, caught the imagination of the think tanks and the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey got them busses and 24 hour coverage on Fox.
The 2010 Republican party went even further right and because Democrats stayed home, Republicans were rewarded for the most egregiously partisan obstructionist behavior imaginable. Rewarded for record filibusters, death panels, holding unemployment insurance hostage to extend the Bush tax cuts and generally pushing the already horrible atmosphere in D.C. to a new low of gridlock and hate. They were REWARDED for the worst possible behavior. This is so unnatural politically as to be untenable.
Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh epitomize the GOP's social philosophy. Mitt Romney represents their failed and laughable economic philosophy (handing the 1% 93% of the recovery). And Mitch McConnell represents their sexy side. So how in hell do they remain a legitimate national party?
When Federalist John Adams just missed reelection in 1800, losing to Thomas Jefferson by one elector, he and Alexander Hamilton thought it was an aberation and the Federtalists would be back in power soon. John Adams turned out to be the last Federalist president. In fact, the Federalists would never again have as much influence and by James Madison's second term the Federalists soon disappeared as a party entirely.
It's entirely up to Democrats to get fired up and make 2012 look like 2008 and send Republicans to join the Federalists on the island of misfit parties.