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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"The five stages of Republican grief" by Ezra Klein at WP
The five stages of Republican griefby Ezra Klein at WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/08/the-five-stages-of-republican-grief/
"SNIP............................................
Dick Morris and Sarah Palin are out at Fox News. Rep. Paul Ryan is helping House Speaker John Boehner talk his caucus down from the debt-ceiling ledge. Sen. Marco Rubio is going from one conservative talk-radio host to another to sell them on bipartisan immigration reform. Louisianas Gov. Bobby Jindal is telling Republicans to cease being the stupid party. Tea Party icon Jim DeMint left the Senate, while FreedomWorks, a Tea Party catalyst, went through a nasty, costly divorce with its figurehead, Dick Armey. Karl Roves super-PAC is turning its formidable financial artillery toward helping Republicans win primary elections against Tea Party insurgents.
The Republican establishment is reasserting control. Its purging some of the hucksters whod taken the partys reins or at least the airtime in recent years. Its resisting much of the brinkmanship that marked the last Congress and trying to present a more fearsome, united front against counterproductive strategies favored by the right. All of the major 2016 presidential contenders have made the same political calculation: Its better to build a reputation as one of the partys adults than as one of its firebrands.
Weve had a period of this movement at the grass-roots level, call it Tea Party or something else, and it seems to me were seeing the normal progression of a grass-roots populist movement, said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. It ran out of control for a few years thats why we call it a movement rather than an organization. But its receding a bit now. Thats allowing natural leaders to reassert themselves, and institutional forces to reassert themselves.
Just dont call this process moderation. The Republican Party isnt reinventing itself so much as reverting to its previous form. Theres little evidence of a rethinking of core Republican policy ideas. Theres no obvious analogue to the Democratic Leadership Council of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was a moderating influence on the Democrats, or even to the compassionate conservatism that George W. Bush promoted to the nation in 2000.
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shenmue
(38,506 posts)1. Staring at the teevee
2. Yelling
3. Posting something on FR
4. Putting bad stickers on their cars
5. Yelling more
calimary
(81,509 posts)in the WORLD is not going to get them more votes if they cling to the same old stale irrelevant, intolerant, closed-minded, antiquated policies and ideas and agenda. The yowling and scolding they're doing to each other for self-improvement is STILL - all cosmetic. Surface-only. They can NOT talk about rape all they want, but they still believe it's a woman's fault and if she gets knocked up by it it's STILL her fault and totally on her and she's stuck there with no recourse. She's lucky if she doesn't get some long plastic phallus jammed up into her privates as they tried to mandate by law in Virginia and are looking at, seriously, elsewhere.
They STILL DON'T get it. It's not HOW you message. It's WHAT you message.
The only hope they have of longterm reinvigoration is to change some of their ideas, open their minds more, look around and observe REAL reality, not the fake "reality" that Pox Noise tells you about all the time. They need to face and accept the changing and evolving views of a majority of the American public. And stop trying to defy the changing reality around them. Adapt or die. Be flexible so you can bend, or be rigid and get snapped in half.
jerseyjack
(1,361 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Zoeisright
(8,339 posts)"Natural leaders" my ass. All it takes to be a repuke leader is to be a greedy, cruel, ignorant misogynistic liar.
Viking12
(6,012 posts)jeebus probable fits in there somewhere, too.
AlinPA
(15,071 posts)McConnell, Boehner, Rubio, Ryan are all extreme rightwingers who are being dragged by the nose by the teabaggers.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Democrat Party and try to sneak the damn Tea Party in also and we sure don't want them in our party.