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Democratic Underground, 2002 -- In the eyes of many modern conservatives, the battle between Republicans and Democrats is a battle between the Godly and the Satanic. To call this mindset a rejection of civility is to seriously underestimate the danger it poses. It's a rejection not merely of civility, but of the assumptions about tolerance and equal access that drive our political process….

Modern right-wing rhetoric becomes much less irrational if it's seen as the last gasp of the right's pretense of commitment to political freedom. Rather than self-destructing or imploding, it's quite possible that many conservatives are on the verge of moving from the covert to the overt rejection of this ideal. (emphasis added)

The first opinion piece aside from discussion forum OPs that I ever posted to the Internet was an essay carried by the then-brand-new website, Democratic Underground back in 2002. My piece was about American liberals and moderates hopefully opining (and let me emphasize -- this was eleven years ago.) that the right was “imploding.” As I observed back then, “This often takes place after some spectacularly insane statement from the right, like a Bush administration spokesman claiming that toxic sludge is good for the environment or a right-wing pundit suggesting that we invade France… Many liberals mistakenly believe that the right wing has an emotional investment in the logic of its own claims and, as a result, is due any day now to simply die of embarrassment.”

And that, I think, has been the core of the problem – a naïve refusal by many in politics and the media to focus on the serious agenda underlying all that ridiculous right-wing rhetoric. For three decades these extremists have been dismissed as irrelevant by moderate liberals and tolerated as “useful” by moderate conservatives. Now they have amassed enough influence to set into motion their dream of what amounts to a political monopoly. Voter suppression and gerrymandering are there to short-circuit the power of demographically liberal voters, and the very ability of a presidential administration to implement a law it has passed has come under attack. Merely enacting important legislation with which the right disagrees is presented as an outrageous act, even an impeachable offense.

And yes, the fact that our president is an African American does give a boost to this attack on political diversity. One of the oldest tricks in the racist book is portraying acts considered normal when done by a white man as criminal when done by a black man. The Republican Party, always willing to exploit racism, is happy to use that assumption as leverage.

I don’t know where this will end. Salon has a piece up saying the Republicans are just likely to get even more right wing. How much further can the GOP go to the right without openly declaring themselves the party of racism and religious dominionism and embracing violence as a tactic?

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From:

meus-ovatio.livejournal.com

Well mostly I chalk up the current state of the GOP as the result of the Bush Jr Administration basically gutting, destroying and coring out the GOP establishment during its tenure. They either ended careers, fired people, alienated others, or otherwise destroyed people that weren't on board with Cheney or Rumsfeld. So after they left, there was nothing left to maintain party leadership and control. Everyone who would've maintained a party discipline and structure whilst they were in the minority, was gone. So now the GOP is just a headless monster flailing about with no leader, no direction, and at the mercy of the Tea Party vandals who only come to the fore when there is a power vacuum and they capitalize upon it. I mean, the Democrats maintain party order and discipline whether or not they win majorities, its how political parties operate and survive on long time scales. But the GOP destroyed itself from within, thanks to Cheney and Rumsfeld knifing very perceived threat and every viable rival to their bureaucratic power.

From:

paft.livejournal.com

That's an interesting point, and probably true. But I also blame the rise of the Religious Right, starting with Falwell's Moral Majority, and Newt Gingrich's cynical evisceration of language in that famous talking points memo of his. Both of these things unfettered Republican thoughts and actions from either reason or reality, and paved the way for the craziness of the Bush II administration.

My family knew beltway insiders on both sides of the political aisle, and they were all, Republican and Democrat, infuriatingly complacent about the GOP's embrace of the RR. The DC Democrats dismissed the religious right as a bunch of stupid hicks (which it definitely was not) and the DC Republicans insisted that Falwell/Robertson, etc. didn't really mean anything, that they were a bunch of stupid hicks who they, the Republicans, were merely using. One Republican relative of mine stuck to this even after the debacle of the 1992 Republican convention, where the GOP platform was practically written by Pat Robertson. "The platform doesn't mean anything," he insisted.

From:

kylinrouge.livejournal.com

Fear runs the GOP, that's how they're able to keep people with such wildly different opinions in it; The Moral Majority (who want to police your body) and the Agnostic Libertarians (who want no police at all).

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