State of the Republican Party

[WARNING: If you are superstitious, do not read this, as it might be considered pre-hatch chicken counting].

With the election less than two weeks away and with it appearing that the Democrats will take the Presidency back and win big in Congressional races, this final stage of the campaign is a good time to look at the state of our two major political parties, beginning with a brief history of how we got here and then offering thoughts today on the what is happening to the Republican Party.

The Republican Party was debilitated by the Depression and buried by the success of the FDR New Deal. Ike was a moderate and the Dems controlled Congress during his time, so not much Republican policy got adopted. LBJ continued what JFK started, with the Great Society bringing civil rights and medicare, but being pushed out by the Vietnam War. Nixon devised the wedge issue strategy, playing to those who objected to war protestors and who were scared that civil rights threatened white privilege. He lied about having a plan to end the war, and escalated it instead. Paranoia drove him to Constitutional violations which led to his downfall.

Carter was a fluke, the outside breath of fresh air after the stench of Watergate. He had no inside help in facing an inflationary economy and a high profile terrorist kidnaping. He had no particular Democratic policies, just a hodge podge of well-meaning but uncoordinated proposals.

Reagan took the Nixon wedge issue approach to new levels, expanding them from just racial and crime related to include religion, nationalistic imperialism, rural versus urban, elites versus the majority, entrepreneurs versus entitlement takers, strict constructionists versus legislating judges, and many others, all rolled into a frame of quintessentially American conservatives versus un-American liberals.

Bush I was not enough of a people person to carry on the Reagan mess more than one term. And in fairness to Bush, he recognized that Reaganomics had failed to the point where some taxes had to be reinstated to bring balance. His heresy made Bush a victim of what Reagan had sown, and the Perot third party effort made Clinton President. After two years of Republican Congressional stonewalling, Newt Gingrich led the fraudulent Contract with America takeover of Congress. But the Greenspan bubble was starting to grow, enabled by Clinton's soft core Republican economic policies and a willing Congress on both sides of the aisle taking contributions from corporate fat cats.

Clinton's libido, Gore's flatness, Lieberman's fizzle, and Republican thievery let Bush steal the White House in 2000. The Compassionate Conservatism scam was dropped even before Bush took over. History will put a name on the Bush-Cheney administration, and my nomination is The Terrible Trifecta. Bush should get his place in history as the worst President because he has done the three worst things a President can do: ruin our international reputation with incompetent imperialistic war; allow our economy to completely destruct; and undermine our Constitutional framework of separation of powers.

History will say the Republicans never had a chance in 2008. They let McCain run because they knew they were going to lose. All the McCain rivals were inherent losers too - a fear mongering prosecutor, a fundamentalist preacher, a Mormon financial manipulator and another second rate actor. McCain made it close for a while, because the Democrats concentrated on two very capable people who had political handicaps, one was a woman married to Bill Clinton and the other was a young black man. The extent of Republican desperation and devastation was shown by the Palin pick. McCain had enough sense to know Palin was a wrong choice, but he did not have the courage and integrity to reject her, and by now the majority of voters recognize that.

Those who vote primarily on religious grounds, homophobia, racial prejudice and gun rights should not be pandered to by a major party, but since Nixon and Reagan started that process, Republicans have no choice if they want to win. They have to appeal to these fringe groups in order to overcome the greater appeal of the Democratic Party position on the issues that really matter to mainstream Americans. True fiscal conservatives and those who prefer more state control and less Federal involvement have now been revealed as falling into two camps, one legitimately focused on these issues and believing they can be the basis for a viable Republican Party, and one willing to keep pandering to the fringe groups because they do not believe they can elect Republicans without them. How self-identified conservatives react to the Palin pick is the way to tell to which camp they belong.

This informative article from the New Yorker tells the story of how Palin charmed two contingents of conservative supposed intelligentsia into getting her the VP slot. They figured she would appeal to the fringes and also pay lip service to fiscal and states rights issues. And, all of them being males, and apparently without any good looking women in their lives, they also thought she was "hot" in her heels. (There seems little doubt Palin would have had a political career had she been homely.) These men, and all those who agree with them, fall into the one camp.

The second camp, those who do not embrace Palin, has been growing as more has become known about her astounding lack of qualifications, manifest hypocrisy, shameless demagoguery and fundamental shallowness. Particularly as the public has wisely dismissed her and as the Republican prospects have waned, more conservative intelligentsia have joined this camp, which includes many more females than the first group.

Pundits are now asking who will be the new leaders of the Republican Party. McCain is going out in defeat, disarray and dishonor for the way he conducted his campaign. Palin is a puff that will continue to self-destruct. Joe the Plumber is a fraudulent fantasy. The camp one Republicans are obvious fools. Camp two is peopled by legitimate people who do not want to be associated with the fringe groups.

It would be best for America if the fringe groups formed third parties and the true conservatives of the second camp led the Republican party into becoming a loyal opposition, reminding us to watch our finances and respect state and individual rights. Real political power belongs in the Democratic camp, which needs to lead us forward and may need to subdivide, a subject for a further Sense article.