GOP at Crossroads

[Nbadan]

...and which ever way it goes, it will never be the same GOP again...Party moderates and centrists will either have to bend over and take it from radicals like Cruz or they will attack Cruz through the media....watch what GOP mouthpieces in the media do, will they continue to stand with Cruz or will they turn on him?

Cruz: GOP lost because they didn’t accuse Dems of holding children ‘hostage’
Source: Raw Story

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says that Republicans could have won the fight to derail President Barack Obama’s health care law by shutting down the government if they had just accused the Democrats holding children with cancer “hostage.”

In an interview that aired on Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Cruz if he was bothered on a “human level” that so many colleagues in his own party were angry at him for instigating the shutdown.

“Not remotely,” Cruz insisted. “I work for 26 million Texans, that’s my job to fight for them. I don’t work for the party bosses in Washington… The reason people are frustrated all over the country is that far too many people get elected and they think they’re there to be part of the club.”

The Texas senator observed that things could have turned out differently if Senate Republicans had “marched into battle side by side” with House Republicans to defund Obamacare.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/2...ldren-hostage/

[boutons_deux]

Three Extreme Right-Wing Ideologies Have Taken Over the Republican Party -- and Could Destroy It Forever

The overlapping ideologies of Ayn Rand capitalists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-Confederate white supremacists is a toxic mix

In the long run, however, things do not look good for the Republican Party. Many radical conservatives have come to see their moderate compatriots as worse than any liberal Democrat. They see them as traitors to principle – as politicians who ran scared in the face of Obama’s “socialist” agenda. Under these cir stances, most of the party’s energies might well be taken up with self-destructive infighting.

The Republican Party now runs the risk of shrinking down to its radical base while its moderates are defeated in primaries, flee to the Democratic Party, or stake out positions as independents.

Democratic voters may now be motivated by the recent spectacle of disruption to turn out in higher numbers to win back the House from the Republicans. If that happens, the Republican Party will be hard put to stay alive as a single en y.

Ideology is a form of debilitating shortsightedness. It replaces reality with an idealized version that usually has too little to do with the real world to be workable. The economic aspect of radical conservative ideology is fatally anachronistic.

Earlier, in the Nineteenth Century, it led to devastating business cycles of boom and bust and left much of the population without basic services. The Great Depression should have been its death knell.

As to the size of government and range of its activities, we must keep in mind that there are nearly 317 million people in the United States. Going back to a pre-Great Depression government – much less one sized for Eighteenth Century needs – would undermine social stability by withdrawing all the protections that keep des ution at bay and unleashing all the prejudices that current federal law discourages.

Ignore these facts and eventually you will have real revolution on your hands. The radical conservatives are stubbornly blind to these problems because this reality calls into doubt their “principles.”

All such shortsighted ideologies, be they of the Right or the Left, have proven unrealistic and so have failed. Unfortunately, they have wreaked havoc in the meantime. We have only seen a shadow of the potential for damage of the present ideological challenge. Let’s hope we can avoid its full force.

http://admin.alternet.org/three-extr...age=1#bookmark

[angrydude]

What the is an Ayn Rand capitalist? Objectivism is a personal philosophical system, not a economic theory.

[boutons_deux]

What the is an Ayn Rand capitalist? Objectivism is a personal philosophical system, not a economic theory.

Ayn Rand's principles are nothing but social/economic Darwinism, the adulated makers ing the takers/moochers. Has been trashed for decades as silly, anti-human "philosophy".

[AntiChrist]

There's really not anything extreme or radical about current GOP, tbh, other than the media constantly saying so.

If you think I'm wrong, just give some examples of current GOP views that are extreme.

[Nbadan]

Defaulting on our debt and sending the world economy into chaos for nothing...

[AntiChrist]

Defaulting on our debt and sending the world economy into chaos for nothing...

Didn't happen

[Nbadan]

Didn't happen

Just the threat that it could happen caused the loss of 100K jobs and over 24 billion in lost economic activity...not to mention it hurt our borrowing rate on our debt...

[Nbadan]

"Republican Establishment Planning Attack On Tea Party In 2014"

"SNIP................................

There are many lessons that can be learned from the disastrous 16 day government shutdown this month. One would be that if the Republican Party doesn’t get its act together the 2014 congressional elections could be brutal. And that’s a lesson the Big Business wing of the Republican Party seems to understand as they plot the demise of the Tea Party. The 2014 Republican primaries are going to be something to see.



It took a tea party insurrection that disabled the federal government and wrecked the Republican brand, but after months of handwringing, establishment Republicans are preparing to attack ultra-conservative ideologues across red America.

From Alabama to Alaska, the center-right, business-oriented wing of the Republican Party is gearing up for a series of skirmishes that it hopes can prevent the 2014 mid-term election from turning into another missed opportunity. But this will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in the selection of a presidential nominee in 2016

........................

Tactics being discussed among Republican strategists, donors, and party leaders include running attack ads against tea party candidates for Congress; overthrowing Ron Paul’s libertarian acolytes dominating the Iowa and Minnesota state parties; promoting open primaries over nominating conventions, like the ones that produced Republican hardliners like Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli and shutdown-instigator Mike Lee of Utah; and countering political juggernauts Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks that target Republican in bents who have consorted with Democrats.

...............................SNIP"

http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/10/...party-in-2014/

[RandomGuy]

Didn't happen

It didn't have to happen to do damage, you halfwit, which the threat of such did, in measurable, concrete terms.

The Republican party that says it is for job growth and free markets took action that harmed both.

Statement after statement pretty much outlined that they placed their ideology above ALL ELSE, no matter *what* the cost.

That is not too much unlike the hollah s of Al Qeada who put their ideology above all else, including human decency. I see a group of people who are taking steps down that path and mirroring the language of those who have gone before on the "by any means necessary" route.

I wish I could say I am exaggerating, but I am truly concerned that is where this is heading.

[EVAY]

It didn't have to happen to do damage, you halfwit, which the threat of such did, in measurable, concrete terms.

The Republican party that says it is for job growth and free markets took action that harmed both.

Statement after statement pretty much outlined that they placed their ideology above ALL ELSE, no matter *what* the cost.

That is not too much unlike the hollah s of Al Qeada who put their ideology above all else, including human decency. I see a group of people who are taking steps down that path and mirroring the language of those who have gone before on the "by any means necessary" route.

I wish I could say I am exaggerating, but I am truly concerned that is where this is heading.

It's pretty hard to argue with what you are saying imo. The Tea Party DOES put ideological purity of position above governing. I don't see how any rationale person can deny that. And since it is the job of the legislature of the U.S. Congress to participate in governing, I'll be damned if I see how that is gonna happen when the Tea Party is not the majority Party. And if it SHOULD become the Majority Party, the U.S. will no longer be anything but another theocracy.

Plus, the CBO (Bipartisan congressional budget organization) puts the cost of the shutdown and the THREAT of a default at at LEAST 24 Billion dollars.

What's to argue about that?

[boutons_deux]

The Cry of the True Republican


Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility.

Speaking through the night, Senator Ted Cruz, with heavy-lidded, sleep-deprived eyes, conveyed not the libertarian element in Republican philosophy that advocates for smaller government and less intrusion into the personal lives of citizens, but a new, virulent strain of empty nihilism: “blow it up if we can’t get what we want.”

This recent display of bomb-throwing obstructionism by Republicans in Congress evokes another painful, historically embarrassing chapter in the Republican Party — that of Senator Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose anti-Communist crusade was allowed by Republican elders to expand unchecked, unnecessarily and unfairly tarnishing the reputations of thousands of people with “Red Scare” accusations of Communist affiliation. Finally Senator McCarthy was brought up short during the questioning of the United States Army’s chief counsel, Joseph N. Welch, who at one point demanded the senator’s attention, then said: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” He later added: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Watching the Republican Party use the full faith and credit of the United States to try to roll back Obamacare, watching its members threaten not to raise the debt limit — which Warren Buffett rightly called a “political weapon of mass destruction” — to repeal a tax on medical devices, I so wanted to ask a similar question: “Have you no sense of responsibility? At long last, have you left no sense of responsibility?”

There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out. And eventually party elders in the mold of my grandfather were able to realign the party with its brand promise: The Republican Party is (or should be) the Stewardship Party. The Republican brand is (or should be) about responsible behavior. The Republican party is (or should be) at long last, about decency.

What a long way we have yet to go.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/23...epublican.html

[boutons_deux]

How Sleazy Christian Con Artists Took Over the GOP

The culture of fundamentalist Christianity has had profound impacts on the Republican party in the past few decades, moving Republicans to the right on various issues and forcing Republicans to prioritize gay-bashing and attacks on reproductive rights. The shutdown, however, ended up demonstrating something even more sinister. Republicans are no longer just cribbing their political ideology from fundamentalist Christianity. Increasingly, conservative politicians are abandoning the basic task of representing the interests of their voters and instead are exploiting their voters in the same way televangelists and other fundamentalist charlatans exploit the true believers that come to them looking for spiritual salvation.

Ted Cruz is the most prominent example, at least in the past month. After the shutdown debacle, it became clear that Cruz has no interest in using his position as a Texas senator to work on behalf of the voters who got him there. Instead, his M.O. is pure sleazy televangelist: Lots of public grandstanding to convince his marks, previously known as cons uents, that he's on their side, for the sole purpose of shaking them down for money and support without offering anything in return.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/how-s...tter914804&t=5

[AntiChrist]

That is not too much unlike the hollah s of Al Qeada who put their ideology above all else, including human decency. I see a group of people who are taking steps down that path and mirroring the language of those who have gone before on the "by any means necessary" route.

I wish I could say I am exaggerating, but I am truly concerned that is where this is heading.

Lol

[RandomGuy]

Lol

(shrugs)

The Republican party will not get the Presidency again in our lifetime, barring some wildly unforseen.

This is going to drive the collective conservative herd insaner than they already are, being whipped up into a conpiracy theory spiral of stupid.

Birthers and creationists are just the beginning.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

(shrugs)

The Republican party will not get the Presidency again in our lifetime, barring some wildly unforseen.

This is going to drive the collective conservative herd insaner than they already are, being whipped up into a conpiracy theory spiral of stupid.

Birthers and creationists are just the beginning.

The way Christie is going and how popular he is in the NE, you very well could be wrong. It's a long time from now but while the party may be losing legitimacy that doe snot preclude popular individuals getting the nomination Between now and then, the DeMint contingent could dominate and force feed Rand Paul down the electorate much like Romney was last year but there are legitimate GOP candidates out there.

The GOP issues are going to be more at issue regarding legislative power on all levels. Taht is going to be doubly true if they spend the next couple of years in a power struggle. It's not hard to cast the GOP in a bad light as it is but if they are sniping and backbiting out in the public eye it could get ugly. Right now its threats but that could change big time in the next 12 months. The RNC and the big time donors are pissed off.

[DMX7]

That clown doesn't work for me.

[Nbadan]

The way Christie is going and how popular he is in the NE, you very well could be wrong. It's a long time from now but while the party may be losing legitimacy that doe snot preclude popular individuals getting the nomination Between now and then, the DeMint contingent could dominate and force feed Rand Paul down the electorate much like Romney was last year but there are legitimate GOP candidates out there.

I agree Christie could attract GOP moderates and just enough independents to get him over on Hillary... imo that would depend on the Vice Presidential candidates and how damaged Christie emerges from the GOP Primaries..

[Nbadan]

None-the-less the GOP knows that it's compe ive edge on the National level is diminishing...that is why they have focused their energies on State elections and niche issues it knows it can win... God and guns

[boutons_deux]

"Christie is going and how popular he is in the NE"

Wall St obese greasebag Christie will never be President. He won't even be the Repug candidate

[AntiChrist]

I'm curious how Nbadan learned to stop worrying and love the drones. All it took was one initial (D.)

[boutons_deux]

...

[Nbadan]

I'm curious how Nbadan learned to stop worrying and love the drones. All it took was one initial (D.)

I never hated the drones....I hated the invasion and occupation of a country that never attacked us...

[AntiChrist]

I never hated the drones....I hated the invasion and occupation of a country that never attacked us...

Lol, your "principled stand" rings hollow.

[Nbadan]

Lol, your "principled stand" rings hollow.

Who voted you the Pope?