we'll see moderates peel off from the Dems to Join the GOP as it becomes more sane.

I think new dealers would win.

That is why I cannot figure out why, for the past 30 years, the Democratic Party has tried to be "GOP-lite."

Reagan caught them flat-footed with a much better sales job and the right wing noise machine was cranking up at about the same time.

And JFK was killed for doing a better sales job than the GOP and then actually trying to be the real president of the United States, which probably made a lot of the heavyweights think twice about getting in the ring.

... the Democratic Party was led to believe, by the DLC, (the Republican party in sheep's clothing,) that Democrats would never win another election again, unless they moved to the right. And Bill Clinton was their first candidate, supposedly prooving that what they (the DLC) said was true about "moving to the right."

Walter Mondale's kicking in 1984 and Mike Dukakis falling to Lee Atwater's sausage grinder in 1988, I believe, set a lot of needless hand-wringing off in the Democratic Party that culminated in "me-tooism." Unfortunately it still holds sway over much of the party.

I see very, very little difference in a DLC "Democrat" and a pre-Reagan Republican.

Not to disrespect the dead, but when I first heard Paul Tsongas speak, it was nearly impossible to believe that he was really a Democrat.

Unfortunately that is the long arc here. The right wing has gone further right, which has dragged the center along with it. Does anyone on the left deny that President Obama is centrist? But the right keeps calling him socialist. Playing this game eventually drags everything over to the right.

A home for moderate Republicans might provide some political space for more progressive thought. The Democratic party, may be required to return to its roots. That is one possible outcome.

The country has been pushed so far right just having to deal with these tea party extremists that many democrats are now where republicans used to be just since the '70s and Nixon. No one is talking about changing our trade policies or rebuilding our infrastructure. There is no such thing as "liberal" media, it's all corporate conservative media. Lee Atwater got the cons to "play the refs" so now it's always "both sides are equally guilty" because the media is afraid to say it is the republicans who caused the shutdown or the sequestration etc. or the cons will scream "liberal bias" even though it is the truth. Keeping the drama going ensures more money for the media, truth be damned.

Only one side is guilty of dragging our nation down for political purposes, selling out to the plutocrats who are turning us into a third world nation to satisfy their greed.
I hope the republican party "split" does not translate into a more conservative democratic party.

The Democratic Party becomes the Right-of-Center party, and a progressive party springs up to it's left.

I don't think a "Tea Party" could survive nationally.

Workers in the USA have NEVER had a real party of their own. The Dems during their most populist eras maintained the fiction that they could be both for workers and for the bosses too. But it's a zero-sum game. Workers' interests and owners' interests are always on parallel tracks. They rarely intersect and when they do, they only intersect on practicalities, NOT in motives.

This is what they are.

Bush II barely wins his first term and they (and the "liberal media) are breathlessly babbling about a permanent majority.

They are just being hysterical, childish and self indulgent.

In the end, they ALL have one fundamental value - they have the liberal boogyman.

SOMETHING will come up/be ginned up that they all have their common enemy again.

I am not one to talk but that is not a good look.

Crazy sideburns was the style, north and south.

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You're watching the beginning of the end of the Republican Party.

Nativists/White Nationalists. They're in the mix as well.

irrelevant. You're right though. Forgot the modern day "Know Nothings."

I love it so much that I hope there are soon at least three of them.

If it's the "new generation," it will be short-lived:

I'm beginning to understand why that is.

If he's saying this publicly, it makes me doubt it all the more.

Those fucks are ever angling for more control over the GOP itself. They don't say a thing that isn't propaganda aimed at accomplishing just that.

I enjoy having two parties to keep us in the middle, both containing extremes pulling away from the center with new ideas.

Matt Kibbe and Ted Cruz are hustlers, like the evangelist preaching on Sunday after sleeping with your spouse on Saturday. Defaults are not in your interest, destroying the best politicians you have like Lugar is not in your interest. Stop drinking the Kool aid and understand you need Condeleeza Rice as much you as you need Sarah Palin. Karl Rove as much as you need Rush Limbaugh.

Wake up conservatives, but I put my money on Koch/Cruz/Kibbe/Needham leading them over a cliff with their "populist" movement.

That's not much of a basis on which to claim to be the shape of the future. I mean, the Civil War already determined that urban and industrialized can crush rural and agricultural any day of the week, and fighting that war again is not going to turn out any differently.

But in a larger sense, I suspect that any dynamic new political movement has to have a strong economic basis that is not yet fully represented in terms of political power. And the Tea Party just ain't that. They've got some sugar daddies from the old extractive industries, and that's about it. They represent a shrinking demographic with no grounds for future growth.

The tech industry does have the wealth, as well as enough libertarians to form the core of a new conservative party. But there's no way they're going to ally themselves with the religious right and the angry old white men of the Tea Party. It should be interesting to see how this plays out.

and if so, I'm all in favor. I'd love a future where the debates are between libertarianism and socialism, rather than being about religion or jingoism or nativism or communism or any of that other baggage of past centuries' darkness and ignorance.

their cash cow ...

Now running for national office is a lucrative career in itself. You are a paid public performer, an actor judged by how good your acting is and saying what you are paid to say.

No better outcome could be had from Obama's time in office than a split in the right wing vote...thereby insuring Democrats control for decades to come.

of his own party members in the House.


Civil war is upon you.

You allowed Big Money Libertarians and Christian Fascists and their money take control of the direction your party was headed, and those two different factions got together and got a bunch of Know-Nothings elected.

Those ignorant racist rubes are now Frankenstein's Monster intent on destroying the very people who created him in their quest to take over or destroy this nation.

but the machine they built has an ugly mind of it's own. They're going to have to work with the other side in order to put this nasty monster down.

The teabaggers aren't "grass roots". They are astroturf funded by libertarian loons.

so that extremists can win elections with only 7% of the vote. If his fantasy comes true of course. He crazy.

and if we had a three party system in which one clearly owns the center, they could become dominant.

But I don't think that'll ever happen, for two reasons. First, because the two party system appears to be self-correcting, with nobody able to actually position themselves in the center. And second, because even if they rid themselves of the the hateful nativists and confederates and other know-nothings, they'll be more than ever the party of the wall street pirates rather than of working people.

Indeed. Believe it or not, "We the People" have more power over our government now than we ever have in the past. The internet is facilitating a global, democratic revolution.

-Laelth

parasites.

:fingerscrossed:

some of the crazy right will go to the libertarians, but most conservatives will state right where
they are because the "GOP" has finally been turned into what they've wanted all along.

The base will stay right where they are. Proudly racist. Proudly homophobic. Proudly pro death penalty.
Proudly pro war. Proudly anti woman. Proudly anti poor.

These fucking morons are all lemmings of right wing hate radio. They're a nasty boil on this nation's ass and have been festering for 25 years now. The boil is going to pop sooner or later.

to their names.

re-branding, or whatever.