Like a punch-drunk fighter who just woke up from a knock out asking “Wha Happon,” the Republican Party has spent the last week licking its wounds and trying to come to terms with why they were so incredibly wrong and how they could have lost in such a lopsided landslide when they were so convinced they would win. Republican analysts and pundits have been buzzards on an antelope carcass, picking the election bone dry and pointing the finger at any and everybody as to just what went so catastrophically wrong. But sometimes, in the words of Michael Jackson, it’s best to just look at the “Man In The Mirror!”
Let’s face it, the Republican Party is dead. D-E-A-D!! It’s been on life support since the McCain/Palin debacle of 2008, but was pronounced dead and buried on election night 2012. Sure, it still exists in general terms, but the once Grand Old Party has been reduced to a laughing stock and the punch line of a joke — along with other fringe political groups like the “Rent Is Too Damn High” Party. That can’t be good. The irrelevancy of the GOP today has been a long time coming and sadly, it’s at its own doing. The only thing sadder is, they’re the last to know it.
For years, the GOP has been morphing into a group of 1 to 2 trick pony misfits: extreme religious zealots who think it’s OK to govern a diverse nation by their own narrow views and opinions; racial segregationists who still believe African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and women are irrelevant non-factors in society; and circus clowns like Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh and others riding on the fringe of reality, whose antics are frequently viewed as borderline insane and a poison-pill to the perception of the party. As one blogger put it, “The Party of NO has morphed into an insane, reptilian, pitch-fork wielding, redneck, racist, bible-thumping, malformation of reason.” Ouch!
But instead of looking at and accepting the REAL problem, Republicans have been looking all around it and making excuses: “Mitt wasn’t a true conservative,” “Hurricane Sandy ruined Romney’s momentum,” or my personal favorite from Republican used car salesman Karl Rove, “Barack Obama suppressed the vote.” Really??
When you’re a VCR salesman in a nation that moved past VHS tapes more than a decade ago, your problem isn’t marketing — it’s that you’re still trying to sell VCR’s! America is a nation of rich diversity: multiple cultures and ethnicities, multiple religious values and beliefs, varying sexual orientations and concepts of what constitutes a family. But when you’re an old, white, married and heterosexual Christian male who thinks the rest of the nation should think exactly as you do, that thinking is as outdated as a VCR and you’re going to lose every single time.
The Republican Party and all its dirty laundry got completely and utterly exposed on election night. More Americans realized that Fox News is not a legitimate and credible news source, but is merely a partisan infomercial used to promote the GOP. More Americans identified Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump as the face of the GOP, who each stirred up nonsensical issues including the antiquated “Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim and ineligible to be president,” or the “Here’s $5 million dollars to show me your college transcripts” tomfoolery, instead of real issues that affect real people. And Americans paid extremely close attention to the social networks, where disgruntled Republican voters throughout mainly southern states, let the “Obama is a Nig*er,” “Obama should be assassinated” and the “Blacks and Fa*gots have killed traditional America” comments fly freely across the Internet.
If the Republican Party truly wants to know AND accept what went wrong and what killed their party, they don’t have to look far — they simply need to take a look at the “Man In The Mirror!” R.I.P.
THERE. You've nailed it DJ. Americans have indeed "paid extremely close attention to the social networks, where disgruntled Republican voters throughout mainly southern states, let the "Obama is a Nig*er," "Obama should be assassinated" and the "Blacks and Fa*gots have killed traditional America" comments fly freely across the Internet."
In fact, Americans continue to pay extremely close attention to EVERYTHING the Repubs are saying AND doing.
For decades the GOP have actively courted (and stoked the irrational fears and prejudices of) the most racists, ignorant , unintelligent and HATEFUL kinds of people, in our society, just to get votes. And sadly it worked. From Nixon to G. W. Bush.
But it appears..those days are gone. And the monster the GOP leaders spent years creating is now killing it from the inside out.