GOP Acts Like Total Dems, Whine to New York Times Typist

 
 Hey, here’s a strategy that’s high on wow-factor but lacking in any sort of long-term sustainability: wrapping oneself in the flag to give authenticity to the demonization of gays, the war oncaterpillarswomen, the alienation of Latino/as, the disenfranchisement of African Americans, and the refusal to raise taxes on anyone, ever, in spite of the high costs of maintaining an enormous military-industrial complex that is perpetually in a state of war. As it turns out, this sort of strategy creates factions, factions that are very passionate! Especially when you pretend to be for all manner of “freedom,” unless such freedom involves doing certain kinds of drugs or having abortions or buttseks. In a delightful article called “Republicans Worry About Keeping Factions Reined In,” a New York Times typist helps us learn about all these factions, by interviewing important Republicans and writing down what they say.

TAMPA, Fla. — Mitt Romney arrives here this week to accept his nomination from the increasingly disparate coalition of factions known as the Republican Party, confronting the challenge of unifying them behind him and — should he win — exerting his own authority over a party that is in many ways still forging a post-Bush identity…

Some leaders expressed worry that the turn to contentious social issues in the days leading up to the Republican National Convention , where the party platform is likely to embrace a tough anti-abortion stance and strict curbs on immigration, could undercut the party’s need to broaden its appeal. Many of them said they feared it was hastening a march to becoming a smaller, older, whiter and more male party.

Is this a PROBLEM, though, when your platform openly embraces the idea of disenfranchising non-white males? The New York Times typist does not appear to have asked. But we are guessing that voter ID laws is not enough to ensure the dominance of old white men in the long term.

In some ways, the Republican Party today appears more factionalized — ideologically, politically and culturally — than Republican leaders said they could remember in recent history.

There are evangelicals, Tea Party adherents, supply-siders who would accept no tax increases and a dwindling band of deficit hawks who might. There are economic libertarians who share little of the passion that social conservatives hold on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. There are neoconservatives who want a hard line against Iran and the Palestinians, and realists who are open to diplomatic deal-cutting.

More than anything, the party is racked by the challenge to the establishment from Tea Party outsiders, who are demanding a purge of incumbents who play by a set of rules that many of these Republicans reject.

Quick interruption: are these Tea Party people really “outsiders” if they are getting elected into important positions, like say, Congress? And which Republicans, other than possibly Olympia Snowe and Ron Paul, reject these "rules," given that many of them are literally written in the GOP platform?

“The party itself is in a transition time,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the No. 3 Republican in the House. Highlighting a shift in the House to a younger and less traditional generation of conservative leaders, he said, “My theory is the Senate is like a country club and the House is much like having a breakfast at a truck stop.”

That is a fascinating theory, Kevin McCarthy! You might know Congressman McCarthy from his plot to ruin America with the help of Frank Luntz and his defense of mainstreaming Islamophobia . Definitely, this is a guy that should be at the country club and not the truck stop.

It may not be easy. When Republican leaders sought to push the party’s nominee , Representative Todd Akin, out of the Senate race in Missouri, for saying women who are victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant, Mike Huckabee, the conservative talk-show host and 2008 presidential candidate, came to his defense.

Psst… Todd Akin’s position IS the GOP party platform , but we won’t tell if you won’t.

“There’s a tendency by a lot of folks that says, ‘We have been doing business in the way we have for so many years here, we shouldn’t be burdened by the election of so many people who want to make it difficult to continue doing business as usual,’ ” [Dick Armey] said…

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who defeated the party’s incumbent, Bob Bennett, in 2010, said his victory reflected voter frustration with the way both parties had dealt with spending and taxes. He pointed to upsets this year in Indiana, where Senator Richard G. Lugar was defeated in the Republican primary by Richard E. Mourdock, a challenger supported by conservatives and Tea Party groups, and Texas, where Ted Cruz, a Tea Party candidate, won the Republican nomination for Senate by beating the candidate backed by Gov. Rick Perry, a conservative Republican.

“A lot of that has resulted from the fact that the federal government has grown so much just in the last two years at an outstanding rate,” Mr. Lee said. “That caused a lot of voters to ask questions that they might not have been so inclined to ask a few years ago.”

But HOW IS THE GOVERNMENT BIGGER, Mr. Lee? We don't know, because the New York Times typist does not appear to have asked him. Also, the New York Times typist may not be aware of the fact that just about all of these so-called "outsider" and "extreme" positions are LITERALLY WRITTEN DOWN AND CALLED THE GOP PLATFORM. But regardless, we eagerly await whatever disruptions to the convention that will surely be caused by Paultards.

[ New York Times ]