They control the house and effectively the Senate. They have a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court. They dominate the Governorships and many state legislatures. Just because Obama won by a 51-47% vote doesn't mean they are going away.

Until they are rooted out of their strongholds, I don't see them changing.They are just waiting for the propaganda to work and for people's memories to fade, so that they can strike again. Remember, in 2000 there was no reason for people to vote for Bush, other than a desire for 'something different', and an unrelenting propaganda push by the media against Gore. And that was enough for them to steal it.

Republicans' chances might be dead on the national level for now, but that doesn't mean that they can't do shady stuff state-by-state in order to boost their odds of "winning" in the future. Even though PBO won FL, there were still about 200K voters who were discouraged due to the inconvenience of long lines caused by Gov. Scott's vote suppression laws. They don't care about winning fair-and-square or changing their policies to adapt to the changing electorate.

The GOP still has quite a bit of strength left. Let's not underestimate them. I mean, Bush got elected twice!

and DOING the job of a representative.

How many of the Dems in Congress really represent core values?

Does Obama do so when he agrees that chaining SS increases is an acceptable idea?

How about when St. Hillary voted for the Iraq war?

Your post actually made me tear up a bit. I hope many more get a chance to read it and we learn that THIS is the way forward.

I've written plenty about the pernicious aspects of the Republican agenda on this forum and others.

As far as Hart-Tsongas-Clinton-Obama, I think their success speaks for itself.

Between Obama and Carter (in 1980). If I had to point out the one really big difference between Reagan and Romney; it is that Reagan was an actor.

They tried to paint Romney (which rhymes with Ronnie) as a successful businessman (instead of an individual born into success). So they took this handsome guy and thought that they could work the same magic that they worked with Reagan, but Romney was born into the 'ruling class' and didn't have the training in acting like Reagan.

I think that was where they really failed; Romney didn't take stage direction as well as Reagan. They came pretty close to pulling it off.

extinct, with many of them going to prison, if not the graveyard.

I remember having debates in college between the Democrat and Republican Clubs. Sometimes after the debates, we'd still be debating afterwards and take it over to the local pizza joint to argue over sodas and pies. Our professors would usually be with us and things sometimes got loud and raucous, but never vicious or mean. I can't see that happening today. Our arguments would usually be over foreign policy and communism, taxes, Latin American policy, military and domestic spending and other topics that did NOT include abortion, gun rights, homophobia, God, and did not veer into race with the venom of today and into women's issues with the intrusion of today's religious right. If those Young College Republicans of yesterday are still around, I can't imagine what they're like today. They almost sounded like moderate Democrats back then! Did they become snarling teabaggers? Independents? Democrats? I know that in any mention of the Moral Majority, only a very few of the young Rethugs viewed them with any approval. They might have been the last Republicans that ever got an education as well from the looks of what's left. Either that, or the intelligent ones bailed on them. Maybe that's another reason the Democrat Party is becoming more conservative. Too many Republicans fled from their party when it got too crazy and joined ours.

They squandered a barge load of money on Mitt Romney. Surely they have plans for revenge.

It is true that the Republicans have been doing their level best to run off everyone except their "base," and their "base" are teabaggers and those to the right of the Tea Party. (Yes, there are some.)

OTOH, in the 2011 redistricting sessions the GOP, who at that time had taken control of way too many statehouses, managed to gerrymander their states to ensure continued Republican control of the House of Representatives.

because they are too self-centered and narrow minded to get over the "i want everything i want or i'm staying home" nonsense.

Alot stayed home because they were angry at the president for not being left enough and now we have massive republican gerrymandering. rick scott, scott walker, john kasich, nikki haley, that asshole in pennsylvania, that douchebag in michigan.

Democrats need to remind ourselves, which is why i vote every election: getting 60% of what you want with a centrist Democrat is better than getting 0% of what you want with a tea bag jihadist.

Next year, we can undo the mess 2010 created by getting the governors that we had out of office through the vote.

don't stay home!!!

Midterms, Presidential Races, special local elections, even dog-catcher elections....

Every Election, Every Time....VOTE as if your life depends on it (because it does!).

No Excuses...just VOTE.

As you say they are "afraid of being challenged by the party's lunatic fringe," but that's almost all they have left. The minority of their party is made up of actual conservatives, which by definition is not progressive. People in all walks of life are realizing that you can't be conservative, non-innovative, non-progressive, in any aspect of life anymore. So they are appealing to the fringe lunatics, which is scary.

National Journal reports on the new push for filibustering Hagel’s nomination. This jumped out at me:

Senators such as Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are claiming they are holding up the confirmation because they want more information from the White House on Obama’s actions related to the 9/11 Benghazi attacks, which have nothing to do with Hagel.

That heartens the Hagel camp, which notes that the opposition to him has mostly to do with a lot of old history—primarily, the inability of many Republican senators to admit they might have gotten Iraq wrong—as well as a new insecurity among Republicans who are desperate for a winning issue.

The impressive thing about the anti-Hagel effort is how politically tone-deaf it is. It’s not just that their opposition is misguided, but they stand to gain nothing from it. No one outside of a small core of hard-liners sympathizes with what Senate Republicans are doing. While they may not be losing any votes over this, they are making sure that all of the moderates, independents, and realists that they have alienated over the last ten years will keep running away from them. Except for dedicated partisans, no one can look at the display most Senate Republicans have put on over the last eight weeks and conclude that these people should be in the majority.

Many of Hagel’s most vocal Senate critics right now were elected in the last two elections. For example, Cruz, Ayotte, and Lee have nothing personally at stake in defending the Iraq war or the wisdom of the “surge.” None of them voted to support either of these, and many of them weren’t in the Senate when Hagel was. I might be able to understand the hostility of older members that bear a grudge against Hagel, but the hostility of the new members is much stranger. They are damaging their reputations to defend the legacy of other Republicans’ failures. Partisan loyalty I can understand. It’s the attachment to the worst mistakes of the worst postwar Republican administration that I can’t fathom.

There’s no question that Republicans in Washington are desperate for a winning issue, but Senate Republicans seem to be missing the point that stalling Hagel’s confirmation (which will happen eventually) isn’t a winning issue for them. In the short-term, they will take a justified beating in the press for their ridiculous tactics, and they are ensuring that the GOP continues to be perceived as nothing more than a party of bombastic hard-liners. The entire episode shows them to be hopelessly beholden to people whose foreign policy views have led to disaster for the country and contributed to three major Republican defeats. Another consequence will be that future Republican Cabinet nominees for major posts are now much more likely treated in the same way. That won’t be good for future Republican administrations or the government as a whole. With a few notable exceptions, Senate Republicans are needlessly wounding their party and making a spectacle of themselves in the process.

.http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/senate-republicans-make-a-spectacle-of-themselves/



They ate too many nutcase mushrooms

Big polluters, big industry, big banks, big insurance, and big religion all need and demand representation in government (or else, they'll take it over by force), and we ain't it.

Never mind the small-minded right wing idiots you meet in the supermarket check-out lines. They will rise and fall with Fox Noise and National Hate Radio. The real threats come from those state legislatures and governors who want to change electoral college rules so that only Republican presidential candidates can win in the future (Tom DeLay's "one party state"--welcome to the Soviet States of America). This is who the threat is, and it doesn't matter under what label they act. Whether it's Bolshevik, Fascist, NSDAP, Falange, or Republican, the goal is the same: power grab under the guise of popular consent.