GOP morphing into cult

DEAR REPUBLICANS (wherever you are):

If I may use the vernacular, your party has gone to hell.

Repugnant evidence is growing each day that  the Grand Old Party has become a cult.  It now excludes anybody who is slightly to the left of Planet Limbaugh and therefore has shrunk beyond recognition unless you are an expert in atomic imaging.      The gatekeepers for the cult have placed a premium on losing. 

The events in just the  last few days have demonstrated that the cult is so deeply intrenched in ideological cleansing that it may soon require all true-believing  members to perform  the "loyalty dance"  so popular back in the days of Mao.  

Check these:

• THE REPUBLICAN  chairman of Kent County, Mich. (Grand Rapids) has canceled a talk at a party fund-raiser by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.  He's too moderate, the chairman said. My God!  The Republican governor of Utah, a proud red state, too moderate? 
• FOX NETWORK refused to air President Obama's Wednesday night news conference - the only network to lower the curtain -  with the apparent decision to not report so that nobody can decide. Instead the network programmed something called "Lie to Me."(I think Fox should rely more on John Stewart to upgrade its limp attempt for clever humor. )  
• RUSHBO HAS has urged John McCain to become a Democrat, too, and take his daughter with him.  
• SEN. OLYMPIA SNOWE,  Maine Republican, was placed on the right-wing's enemies list after an op-ed piece in the New Y0rk Times that questioned the GOP's exclusivity that drove out Sen. Arlen specter.
• REPUBLICAN representatives leading the fight  against the hate-crimes bill (which passed, despite their rants), declared it was a transparent attempt to protect homosexuals. Sample:  Rep. Steve King, the crackpot Iowa Republican, said of hate crimes, "I, Mr. Speaker,oppose and I defy the logic of the people that would advocate for such legislation the very idea we could divine what goes on in the heads of people when they commit crimes".  (I do have a clue to what isn't going on in King's mind.)
• GREG MUELLER,  a high-ranking Republican consultant, proposes that the party can regain its bearing by dusting  off Newt Gingrich's old Contract with America, and Newt couldn't agree more wherever he goes these days, which is usually Fox News.  
• FINALLY, FOR this hour at least, there's this word from the Cincinnati Enquirer about the Hamilton County Republican chairman, Alex Triantafilou, who shamlessly posted two photos on his blog in reaction to Specter's action.  One was a photo of a bald Specter during his chemotherapy; the other of a bald Dr. Evil from the "Austin Powers" movies.

 Believe me, folks, I don't these things up.  Jonestown next for GOP strays?  

  

Specter: Being a Republican no fun anymore

WELL, ARLEN SPECTER just crossed an aisle as wide as the Delaware River.  He is becoming a Democrat, elevating the Republican McParty's  outbursts of hysteria to Vesuvian levels.  And in the early damage-control reaction the best that Republican National Chairman Michael Steele could offer, allowing for his minimal political insights,  was that the Pennsylvania senator was, after all, a renegade with a left-wing voting record. In a prepared statement (who writes these things anyway?)  Steele further noted that Specter was not acting on  "principles of any kind" but rather on the  reality that he was going to be defeated in the  Republican primary. Meantime,  Specter's other navel-gazing critics will have to take a number for their turns on the Fox network. The veins will be popping out of Sean Hannity's forehead.   

But just as it failed to spin socialism, Marxism and all of the other isms into the cloth worn by President Obama, few people outside of Rush Limbaugh's revivalist followers will be impressed by the current GOP's obtuse vocabulary.  Clearly, his former party had put an overwhelming hit on  him by posting up a right-winger in the next senatorial primary with overwhelming appeal to the shrinking right-wing base.  Yes, Sir Michael, you could bet the farm and every luxury car in Pennsylvania that Specter would lose.  And Specter was no more disaffected by his party's suffocating base than the 200,000 Pennsylvania Republicans who are now registered as Democrats.

Although Specter's forced defection will cause more havoc in the Senate's Republican caucus, where it clings to its  fantasy of Government by Filibuster,  don't look for a sudden change in ideological direction.  Check out its gagging  resistance to the appointment of  Kansas Gov.  Kathleen Sibelius as secretary of health and human services.  How toxic could she be as a Democrat who was widely popular in one of the most Republican states in the Union?   Oh, she's pro-choice.  I see.  Republicans now in charge of controlling their party's destiny just don't get it.    

There was an old poem that said "for want  a nail the shoe was lost" and  "for want of a horse the rider was lost."

The GOP today has no horses nor riders.  Nor ideas.  Without them,  the party of Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh  is sounding only its death rattle.  The Moral?  Be careful what you wish for...

 

Arlen Specter: The fading old soldier

LIKE THE old soldier, Sen. Arlen Specter is fading away.  At 79, the Pennsylvania Republican is a textbook example  of how his pre-Whig party is hellbent on erasing any vestige of moderation. Faced with anticipated insurmountable odds in winning the GOP primary against probable hard-right icon Pat Toomey next year (Specter's favorability rating among Pennsylvania Republicans: 30 pct.) the five-term senator  sought  to appease the conservatives by announcing his opposition to the labor-supported card-check organizing bill, a measure similar to one he had earlier supported.  Specter has been pawing around in this trough before, trying  to establish his credentials with left and right, only to make matters worse.   

Clearly, the GOP "thought police" have  little patience with Republicans who don't meet their severe standards of ideological purity.  Their  comfort zone is represented instead with the Palins, Jindals and Cantors, each of whom has sounded quite foolish when the occasion called for it.   Well, it's their party and they can do as they please, I suppose.  But one less Specter won't do a thing for their plans for rising from the dead.