Alter: Is GOP Collapsing Under the Weight of Sleaze?

Alter: Is GOP Collapsing Under the Weight of Sleaze?
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 10, 2007 issue - Earlier this year, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig explained why he favors Mitt Romney. "First and foremost," Craig said, "he has very strong family values." That platitude had power for Craig, as it did for his party. But it turns out that family values might no longer have a "wide stance" athwart American politics. The haste with which his fellow Republicans called for Craig's resignation suggests that they fear many voters will no longer automatically associate the GOP with superior moral standing.

Craig's humiliating story, amplified in more than 10,000 blog posts, isn't new, and not just because homosexual men have been trysting in the toilet area since the introduction of public restrooms more than a century ago. The conservative-hypocrisy angle goes way back, too. When I first moved to Washington, D.C., in 1980, Maryland Rep. Bob Bauman, arguably the single most anti-gay and sanctimonious right-winger in town (quite a feat), was busted for sex with a 16-year-old male dancer. Soon he was joined by Mississippi Rep. Jon Hinson, found in a compromising position in a men's room down the hall from his House office, and the Franklin child-sex ring, which ensnared more than a dozen officials in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. I remember thinking, this will stop the moralizing windbags who are pushing aside old-fashioned, leave-us-alone libertarians.

How naive. In succeeding years, the hypocrisy just rose to a higher level. Both House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his (brief) successor, Rep. Bob Livingston, ripped into President Bill Clinton while they were having affairs themselves. When Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott asked all Republican senators to show up at Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address as a sign of respect for the office, Larry Craig was one of only two senators who refused, later calling Clinton a "nasty, bad, naughty boy."

By 2004, Karl Rove used fear of moral decay (as reflected primarily in gay marriage) to whip the conservative base into a frenzy that helped re-elect President George W. Bush and scores of Republicans. Post-election studies showed "values voters" were not as big a factor as the media initially reported, but this hardly discredited their importance: with Democrats tone-deaf on the issue, it looked as if the GOP could ride the "V"-train forever. It couldn't. Results from the 2006 midterms showed that lingering anxiety about homosexuality is being decoupled from the Republican Party, as Democrats picked up seats in Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado even as those states approved anti-gay-marriage ballot initiatives. Conversely, Arizona easily re-elected Republican Sen. Jon Kyl while becoming the first state to defeat an anti-gay-marriage referendum, further evidence that the gay issue is becoming less partisan.

(snip)

In the long term, though, the end of the reign of family values may be a blessing in disguise for the GOP. It has tied its fortunes too closely to evangelical Christians, who make up less than one fifth of the American electorate. To expand the party in the new century, Republicans will eventually have to lift their suffocating veil of sanctimony. "First and foremost" for politicians of every stripe are vision, competence and commitment to a particular set of social and economic ideas, not some claim of moral superiority every bit as noxious as garden-variety hypocrisy.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20546336/site/newsweek/

The "V"-train turned out to be the Moose Knuckle Express. :rofl:

I think the Bushie infrastructure is so thoroughly in place, especially in the areas of minority voter suppression and election fraud activities, that they will only need 35% or so in 2008 to "win".

Look at 2004, from a cricumstantial evidence point of view. The Bushies were dangerously exposed in 2000 because they failed to steal and block enough votes (and also because their efforts were probably nowhere near as complete as they are today) to avoid invetsigation of some sort.

Now, it turned out that the Imperial Subjects of Amerika were so ready to be slvaes that, even exposed, it didn't matter. The crime was gotten away with in broad daylight.

In 2004, the operation was much more widespread, the Bushies never again making the mistake to concentrate on stealing enough electoral votes without the Rigged Popular Vote to back it up. It is a mistake they will never make again.

Of course, as always, post-mortem investigations exposed Bushie malfeasance and the statistical madness in contravention of observed reality, that Bushler "won" 2004 wholly on the strength of CITY VOTER TURNOUT.

I expect it to be worse and more controlled. In 2006, polls had been recalibrated to more accurately reflect the "new paradigm" of Amerika, which is to say they have essentially written Bushie Election Fraud into their polls.

It is Middle Transition Phase in Amerika. We are almost now halfway to the tyranny we will be, and now it begins to ever so slightly, intrude into daily life.

Spy satellites turned against the Imperial Subjects of Amerika
VIPR Teams and Behavior Detection Officers beginning to appear, with their Soviet ways.
Real ID coming soon "Papers please"

There's more, but I don't have the desire to catalogue it all.

The point is, I don't think the Busheis have required popular support at all to "win" elections.

It certainly explains why they didn't hesitate with the nonsense of the Clinton Impeachment even though 70% of the nation was opposed to it, even then.

They don't need anachronistic and useless Voters, not beyond a base 30% of Nazis/Bushies to get out and do their Nazi/Bushie thing in every walk of life, serving the Fuhrer, strengthening the Party, in all they do.

It is also the strategy that the Afrikaners used to chase out the Liberal British. It worked then and it is working now.