TOONS: The Republican Party, Rebranded ----->

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1. "It’s not a party; it’s a cult."

Out of Touch

By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 1, 2009

Not only has the G.O.P. spent years trying to fool everybody in sight with its phony-baloney, dime-store philosophies, it’s now trapped in the patently pathetic phase of fooling itself.

It’s not a party; it’s a cult. I’m no fan of Arlen Specter, but if I were a Republican, I wouldn’t be shoving him out the door and waving good riddance. This is the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Newt (“I’m trying to rise from the ashes”) Gingrich, and the dark force who can’t seem to exit the public stage or modify his medieval ways, Dick Cheney.

It’s a party that doesn’t seem to care about anything other than devotion to a set of so-called principles that never amounted to more than cult-like rhetoric.

After awhile, it became all but impossible to overlook the madness of these true believers and the incalculable damage they had done to the country. Voters who hadn’t sipped from the Kool-Aid themselves couldn’t help but recognize that the G.O.P. was bizarrely detached from the real world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/opinion/02herbert.html

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2. Shrinking Party (from several articles)

GOP: Even more of a rump regional southern party

by kos
Tue Apr 28, 2009

So what's left? How can a regressive, reactionary party continue to function as a national going concern when its message appeals to a shrinking and aging base, and when the nation's youngest voters reject it by a margin of over 30 points?

Specter is center-right, and he's made clear that the GOP is no longer hospitable to him. Sure, his party switching is rank opportunism at its worst, but he was forced to do it because his party moved far to the Right. There's a reason that 200,000 moderate Republicans in Pennsylvania switched to the Democratic Party last year. Arlen has been left chasing those 200,000 voters, which are essentially his base. The Toomey crowd, the ascendent reactionary wing of the GOP, isn't going for "center-right". Their brand of conservatism is of the "far-right" variety, grossly out of step with the American (and Pennsylvania) mainstream.

Lindsey Graham wishes his party was a national one, but until it radically changes to become more in tune with changing social mores, changing demographics, and the newest generations, it'll continue seeing its numbers hail just from the most regressively conservative states.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/28/725399/-GOP:-Even-more-of-a-rump-regional-southern-party




The Incredible Shrinking Party

2009 April 29

In its wild careen to the right, the remainder of the Republican Party is losing more ground every day.

... the Republicans have been in complete decline as a national party, losing heavily in the last two elections. But like a giant anaconda, the Religious Right is maintaining its iron grip on the GOP, squeezing what little life is left from its gasping lungs. The confused and befuddled remnant of GOP leadership is stymied as to a course out of the bramble thicket. It knows that to abandon its social-conservative base will lead to an even smaller number in the next poll and sure defeat next year in the mid-term elections. But what alternative does it really have? The rest of the nation has rejected not only the GOP’s support of greedy CEOs and bankers who have stolen the life blood of our country, but also the mean-spirited social agenda pushed by the Religious Right. But in the grip of fear, the GOP careens farther and farther to the right, clinging to their toxic base unto death.

http://lefteyeonthemedia.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/the-incredible-shrinking-party/




GOP death spiral?

April 29, 2009

The GOP has a huge problem on its hands right now. Recent polls have shown that only 21% of Americans identify as Republicans, and the party seems to be doing everything in its power to shrink that number even further.


5) Ideological Rigidity: Rush Limbaugh and his talk radio cohorts have become the de-facto heads of the Republican party, and their brand of conservatism is both psychotic and extreme, and their relentless quest for ideological purity has only shrunken the party's base. They've driven away the moderates and left only a shell of a party that is coextensive with an ignorant, biblical-fundamentalist minority mostly centered around the American South. The GOP snake is swallowing its own tail and it doesn't even realize it.

http://patriotsquill.blogspot.com/2009/04/gop-death-spiral.html




Republicans, Limbaugh drifting further from opinions of mainstream America

By Jessica Opoien | Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Gone is the focus on traditional Republican values like fiscal conservatism, small government, and personal freedom. Today’s GOP is increasingly marginalized and is in grave danger of becoming the Limbaugh Party — a party driven by the Religious Right’s fundamentalist-Christian-rooted, anti-gay, nationalistic, anti-science policies. Policies pushed with fearmongering tactics and accusations of fascism and terrorism for those who oppose them.

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/articles/2009/04/28/opinion/doc49f7b1ac3b167426619129.txt

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3. a doomsday cult

By FRANK RICH
Published: May 2, 2009

But the former party of Lincoln and liberty has now melted down to a fundamentalist core of aging, rural Dixiecrats and intrusive scolds — as small as 20 percent of the populace in the latest polls. Its position on the American spectrum of ideas is somewhere between a doomsday cult and Scientology.

Arlen Specter’s defection is the least of the Republicans’ problems, a lagging indicator. Though many characterize his departure as a “wake-up call” for the party, it’s only the most recent of countless wake-up calls the party has slept through since 2006. That was the year that Specter’s Pennsylvania Republican colleague in the Senate, Rick Santorum, lost his seat by a margin of more than 17 percentage points. Despite that rout and many more like it of similar right-wing candidates throughout America, the party’s ideological litmus test is more rigid than ever. The G.O.P. chairman, Michael Steele, and enforcers of Republican political correctness like William Kristol and the blogger Michele Malkin jeered Specter and cheered his departure. A laughing Limbaugh seconded e-mail from listeners commanding Specter to “take McCain with you — and his daughter.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/opinion/03rich.html