The Republican Party has caused its own downfall with its mean spirited, nasty campaigns, and its unwillingness to separate themselves from the power and influence of Fox News Channel, the right wing talk show hosts, and the rhetoric of their own reckless candidates and office holders, and powerful lobbying groups.
Portraying their party as victims, Speaker of the House John Boehner says Barack Obama wants to “annihilate” the Republican Party, and Paul Ryan, the House Budget Chairman and 2012 GOP Vice Presidential running mate of Mitt Romney, said on Sunday that Obama wants to “conquer” the opposition party, rather than compromise.
Somehow, they forget that George W. Bush was out to promote his own program after reelection in 2004, not in the mood for compromise.
The Republicans have not been willing to compromise for four years, and now they are using the psychological term called “projection”, accusing the President of what they have been doing, out to defeat the President and compromise on nothing. It is a despicable trick which no sane person will agree with, as they have shown total intransigence, and threatened anyone who diverts from orthodoxy that they will have the opposition of powerful interest groups, and Tea Party opposition for renomination.
The only way the Republican Party has a future is to modify their ideas, come back to the moderate center, become the party of the 1960s and 1970s, before Ronald Reagan and conservatives “hijacked” the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower!
One of my favorite progressive blogs to read, Winning Progressive, urges caution as predictions of permanent partisan majorities or of the demise of political parties are almost proven erroneous.
http://www.winningprogressive.org/wp-comments-on-the-demise-of-the-gop-creating-democracies-and-the-constitutional-option
You are absolutely correct, as the Democratic Party was considered in deep trouble during the Bush era until 2006, but came back with a roar! So cockiness and ego are always dangerous!
It is very amusing how we are to believe that progressive leftist statist are worried about the future of the republican party. Yes, Professor, lets elect more moderate “me too big government statist establishment” Republicans for the advancement of the progressive leftist agenda and while we are at it keep losing elections. Like with Ford in 76, Bush Senior en 92 (he got elected thanks to Reagan but then went “moderate” raised taxes and lost), Dole, in 96, McCain in 08 and now Romney. All darlings of the Republican establishment, of the media during the primaries and of Democrats.All losers with the exception of Bush in 2000 and his ridiculous “compassionate conservatism”. The most idiotic idea ever because it assumes that the accusation of the left is true, that conservatives naturally don’t care about others. So we has 8 yrs of big government statist Bush, who together with the Democrats gave us the housing bubble crisis. And here we are spending ourselves to self destruction.
So, the only time we had a true conservative on the ticket in the last 40 yrs, we won by a landslide. That was Reagan, who was despised by the Bush’s, the Rockefeller’s and Dole’s of the time. He was hated by the establishment Republicans, the Democrats and the media. But he won. And that is something that was unforgivable and the establishment, the Democrats, media and of course the intellectuals can’t have that happen again. Otherwise, were would they all go? Where would they go to transform and change the world according to their liking , and theories?
Sorry , but the party of individual freedom, which was the party of Lincoln has been hijacked since the 30’s by the statist “me too establishment moderate” Republicans.
Reagan a true conservative? The more we look at the Reagan record, he would not be acceptable in the GOP of today. And the man was very shallow, easily led by ideologues, and he TRIPLED the national debt, and raised taxes and the debt limit multiple times, easily forgotten by conservatives of today, who have managed to create a mythical Reagan. And “individual freedom” led to the beginning of the stratification of wealth in America, to the point that we are the most concentrated wealth nation in the Western world, and the middle class has been decimated from its peak in 1973.
Professor,
Abe Lincoln is probably spinning in his grave over how the Republican Party has moved away from its progressive roots.
Not only Lincoln is “spinning in his grave”, but also TR, Ike, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and so many US Senators in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and even the 1980s, who were appalled at what the “Reagan Revolution” was doing to their beloved party!