David Frum: When did the GOP lose touch with reality?

When they realized the cold hard truth that is American politics,

Radicals win elections, moderates don't.

 

Which elections?

Yeah, you have nuts like Bachmann who can win in safe districts. But that's no different than DeLay in the past or other radicals before him.

Anyways, I'd say that the radicals really went nuts with Palin's nomination. McCain nominated her in the name of getting out the populist vote....... and he got what he wished for, and it's been going on ever since.

 

I'd say they went nuts with Obama's nomination. The Palin nomination was the first symptom.

 

My bad, I probably should have specified.

Yeah, kind of around Obama's nomination and Palin getting picked, I think before the political crowds were aware of the radical right, but the mainstream wasn't, because the radical right had little power, now it seems they control the party, and I personally think it's evolved into an alliance of:

Christian Zionists/ Uber religious right,

Liberaltarians who have become disenfranchised with the Democrats and seem to forget Bush's expansion of executive power,

white supremacists, who see Obama's election as the final straw in the war against the white race,

I also think this alliance's banner of "no taxes" has attracted an upperclas/corporate group (i.e Cain)


I think the only reason moderates haven't completely abandoned the party is because that would kill any chances of conservatives having any power.

 

Not at all. 2010 aside, many governors for example are representative of their constituency regardless of their partisanship. For example Brian Schweitzer's (Democratic governor of Montana) record is more conservative than say Deval Patrick's in Massachusetts. In fact moderate to conservative leaning democratic governors enjoy some of the best approval ratings in the country. (the notable exception for democrats is Christine Gregoire in Washington who is actually more liberal than the general washington population and hence has lower approval ratings there)

The issue was that 2010 was a weird year. Republicans were winning in states and governing completely out of whack with their constituency. People like John Kasich, Scott Walker, Rick Scott and Paul LePaige are governing like they are the governors of some conservative southern state and the result is the worst approval ratings for governors in the country.

Point is that this won't last in the long term. People like Rick Scott can't even break 30% approval ratings right now. These types of candidates aren't sustainable in the long run.

Where radicals are successful though are Republican primaries. The Republican primary system has been hijacked by the extreme right and moderates (unless they have tons of cash) are getting destroyed left and right. That's a far larger problem and one that needs to get addressed. The Republican primary system is failing miserably right now.

 

I haven't forgotten. It's still ongoing today, and it's been ongoing for a long time. You might call it an alliance, but I won't vote in the general election if the Libertarian running for the GOP nomination doesn't win because I don't see much of a difference between Obama and whoever else may win the nomination.

 

That's good to hear that you're still commited to your principles. I know a couple of liberaltarians, and they flip-flop and basically vote against the incumbent, while ignoring all the complaints they made about the other side in the past.

 

This is the guy who coined the term Axis of Evil, right? If so, he needs to apologize for his own complicity before trying to seize the high ground.

 

The GOP became crazy when they decided to let the Christian Right, Pat Roberson, Rusgh Limbaugh and the Ron Paulies run the whole party. The corporate old style GOP deserve blame for decding that no matter how nuts they are from the typical attitudes of the corporate elite toward social sor relgious issues that they would allow the fundamentalists control if they just voted for tax breaks for the upper.1% to 1%.

The corporate Dems deserve blame for not contesting the corporate greed message as it was easier in the short run to just try to get some corporate money also. So do mainstream Christian Church's for not contesting the reduction of Christianity to being for simplistic Bible reading, being against gays, abortion and forgetting the Sermon on the Mount or any traditional Christian charity.

 

Yet that seems to be some of the candidates' fiscal policy.

 

I guess it's nitpicking, but I guess the problem I have with saying it's Obama nomination are that
1. As much as I hate the Tea Party, I'm still wishy-washy on whether they're all racist nutjobs.
2. They would have gone nuts regardless of who was picked. Can you imagine what it would have been like if Hillary had won? Or heck, Edwards, even if he's a white male, was probably the most socialist of the three.

When you think back on it, the 2008 GOP field wasn't really that right-wing. I mean, McCain, Giuliani, Romney, all had huge problems with the right wing nutjobs, and Thompson was lulz. The right-wing reacted badly, and then McCain decided to appease the mob with the Palin pick, which I think was the spark that caused a long-smoldering problem to erupt. When most of America reacted with a total" Who the f is this woman," combined with "Holy f, she's dumb", they didn't take it well.

And also, I know this is going to come off as really odd and perhaps off-topic, but I don't think Americans are really as patriotic as we and the world makes us out to be, and it's one of the weaknesses of individualism, particularly the nasty one which has come out of libertarianism and Paul which declares that there is no such thing as society, and that anyone can do anything as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. "Don't judge me" is these days standard lexicon among my hipster friends, and it's something I've never understood. I know people like to make fun of religious wackos who whine about how everything is corrupting the backbone of society and all that, and it's understood. But there is a society. There is order, and law, and we're not just a bunch of hyper individuals.

There was a recent poll about a week ago which was comparing Americans with Europeans, and there was one that utterly stunned me - whether you consider yourself a Christian or a Frenchman/German/American. Americans were about half and half, while the Europeans were all at least 70%. There's a lot I don't like about Europe, but that's something that has to occur here if this is going to be a country.

 

Oh Carl, you really think the tallanvors, Hightops and estebans of the world are going to read your article?

silly boy

 

Wars and recessions win elections, radicals can just capitalize on them better by providing more of a contrast to the incumbent. Palin was a radical, but McCain's error was that by picking her he essentially doubled-down on all of Bush's failures.

 

Of course he did, because to do otherwise would be to face a hard truth that many commentators identified years ago - there's no unifying force behind the vague idea that after elminating govt/taxes/etc things will magically be better....it's an inherently difficult concept to keep people rallying around once you've basically done most of those things.

The even more unpleasant reality is when you do those things and then realize a lot of them failed. That's when you just start making up your own facts etc...which is what has happened.

 

How scary is it that the guy who penned the most incensing of Bush's words is now a voice of reason in the current GOP...

*shudders*