How can you resist a picture of Bachmann and Cruz in a post about GOP angst?
I'm not sure how he managed to get past the network's thought police, but Bob Dole went on Fox News Sunday and
said this about the party that nominated him for president in 1996:
“I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says ‘closed for repairs’ until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said when asked about the state of today’s Republicans.
Dole also said he doubted he could make it in today’s party.
“I doubt it,” Dole said. “Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon could not have made it because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it.”
Okay, first, the obvious point: Can you imagine a former Democratic presidential nominee saying that Franklin Delano Roosevelt couldn't make it in today's Democratic Party?
This is like John Kerry or Al Gore coming forward and saying the Democratic Party had gone so nuts that John F. Kennedy couldn't survive in it. And Joe Lieberman isn't an analogy—he never embodied the mainstream of the Democratic Party the way Bob Dole once represented the heart of the GOP. So this is pretty unusual stuff.
But here's what had me really cracking up: Dole's lament that fact that Richard Nixon couldn't survive in today's GOP. I get what he was trying to say, but still, when you say your party sucks so much that it sucks more than the guy who perfected the Southern strategy and became the first president ever to resign, then you must really think your party sucks. And judging by how much Republicans love the two lunatics pictured at the top of this post, he's definitely got a point.