Dan's Thoughts

"I'm slippin, I'm fallin, I can't get up"

I spent a lot of time last year writing about politics. When Obama won, the whole game changed. Politics in America had irreversibly shifted from the ‘good old days’ and the ‘old boys club’ to the socially aware and politically active.

In January, before Barack was inaugurated, I wrote a blog about the new Republican Party. I wrote about the great divide within the party between the ‘Patriotic religious folk’ and the ‘fiscally conservative corporate type’. In Obama’s first few months that rift has grown and spread like a dry brush fire.

The Republican Party will be irrelevant within four years unless their direction changes.

That can be done in three very easy steps.

1. Stop listening to past leaders. If Republicans continue to listen to the likes of Dick Cheney and his 9/11 sob stories and Sarah Palin’s hunting trips, they can forget about their party’s sustainability.
2. Lose the Religious stranglehold. As Americans become more secular, making religion a political talking point is going to do more harm to the party than good.
3. Adapt to socially changing views. Keep the conservative fiscal ‘old school’ mentality but be open to progressive social change, because it is inevitable anyway.

When I wrote that post, I didn’t know the shitstorm on the party would be so overwhelming, but is certainly has. In just four months, consider what has happened to the Republican Party.

-Rush Limbaugh somehow became the de facto voice of the party. Partly because the Obama administration crafted that by wanting Republicans to be portrayed as the vile AM afterthought and also, maybe more importantly, because no one in the GOP had the balls to stand up to him.

-But someone did have the balls! Newly announced Republican Party leader Michael Steele correctly said Rush Limbaugh was “an entertainer”. He was right after all, Rush makes hundreds of millions of dollars per year (and he is very good at what he does) to conduct an entertainment talk show on the radio. That is his job, he is an entertainer. So Rush takes offense to Mr. Steele for some reason, in fact, he writes a lengthy bitch letter on his website and spends most of his show tearing down his own party’s leader (face palm). And then what happens? The freakin leader of the Republican Party publically apologized, for being correct mind you, to Limbaugh by kissing his big fat ass. The GOP’s leader was catering to a radio talk show host. What a mess.

- Longtime Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter made an announcement that shocked colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Specter said, “he had become increasingly uncomfortable as a moderate in a party dominated by conservatives” and would join the Democrats. The switch gave the Senate dems 60 members, meaning they had a filibuster proof majority on the hill, making Mitch McConnell more insignifcant than Sanjaya.

-So at a time where the party is in full-blown crisis, Rush Limbuagh gets on his extra wide chair and tells Arlen Specter to hit the road, and to take John McCain and his daughter with him. WTF? Seriously, WTF?

First, Rush Limbuagh tells John McCain, the long-time GOP Arizona Senator who was the Party’s forking Presidential nominee six short months ago, to get lost. John McCain represents everything that is still good about the GOP. He is willing to work across the aisle, holds moderate social beliefs, and he is smart and respected. Yes he sold his soul trying to reach the political apex as President by bringing in Sarah Palin, but you can’t blame anyone for trying to advance their career. And John McCain will be one of the first to privately note how dumb Palin really is.

Second, he tells Meghan McCain to leave. Why? He is afraid of her. Meghan, the 24 year old politically savvy conservative who knows how to use Twitter, is becoming a more important force on the right than anyone. She is socially progressive (supports gay marriage), called GOP voice Ann Coulter “Offensive, Insulting, and Confusing”, sees her party losing influence with her generation, embraces the advancement and utilization of technology, and when being told to leave by Limbaugh responded on Twitter that she is “red till she’s dead.” Meghan McCain represents an actual hope for the party’s future and Limbaugh tells her to piss off. What a mess.

- Esteemed conservative pundit Bill Bennett said conservatives need to stop talking about Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin because “they are not the future of the party”. Duh! Even though I disagree with his politics, I usually enjoy Bennett’s thoughts on CNN. Bright dude.

- Former Republican Bob Barr says, “The GOP is in very deep trouble”. Barr, who was the Libertarian party’s Presidential nominee, noted the GOP has a “lack of any coherent philosophy, vision or leadership.”

- Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said last week that the Republican party could become as “irrelevant as the Whigs.”

- U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter resigned his seat. Souter quite clearly held on long enough that Obama could choose his replacement and not George W. Bush (He did get two appointments after all). Obama gets a chance to nominate a young progressive leaning judge who could theoretically serve for decades.

I am by no means a political scientist or expert pundit. I’m a dude who watches the world around me. I see a major shift in how Americans think and act in their daily lives. Maybe that has to do with the economy, maybe it is the new President, or maybe something else. But everything I see changing favors the Democratic Party going forward, so much to the point where I think the GOP could really become defunct.

Maybe the Libertarians will continue their rise, maybe another political force will evolve. Either way, Republicans are tracking to lose more ground in 2010 and even more in 2012. If they have any hope left, someone needs to step up and save them.

TIME wrote a great article on this subject and a good friend of mine Erin also brought up the topic on her blog. I’d advise anyone that wants to read more to take their eyes onward, they’re both much smarter than I.