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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 09:23 AM
Original message
A Party Reaps What It Sows
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_09/025670.php

A PARTY REAPS WHAT IT SOWS.... Congressional Republicans haven't played a constructive role in policymaking over the last couple of years, in part because they disagree so strongly with Democrats, but there's more to it than that. They've also boxed themselves in -- after a party condemns a president as an illegitimate Communist intent on destroying on America, the party has left itself very little room for compromise.

Indeed, based on its own larger attack strategy, how can the GOP be expected to find common ground with a policy agenda it considers un-American? It's how we go from the GOP agreeing with 80% of the Democratic health care plan to the GOP considering the same plan "Armageddon." Republicans have positioned themselves in such a way as to make working with those who may disagree with them largely impossible.

But this dynamic is not limited to policymaking. Jon Chait explained overnight how this attitude -- the GOP have characterized their efforts as "a twilight struggle to save the last vestiges of the Republic" -- applies to campaign politics.

The premise of all these pleas for (Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican Senate primary} was extremely sensible: this is politics. Sometimes you move the ball forward, sometimes the other team moves it forward. Sometimes you make compromises in order to get ahead.

But the Republican base has been taught not to think this way. This isn't just politics, remember? This is a twilight struggle for freedom. And Mike Castle didn't just cast a couple bad votes. He acquiesced in a sinister plan to undermine capitalism. How could they ever support a candidate like that?


Quite right. These voters have been told by their party not to compromise or settle for partial victories. There's just too much at stake, they're told. Evil forces are trying to take your country away.

Easily misled and manipulated people bought into this rhetoric. They've come to believe it's their responsibility to elect radical ideologues who'll save us from impending doom. Sensible people with last names like Castle, Crist, Specter, Bennett, Murkowski, and Inglis were insufficiently right-wing, so they were cast aside.

These activists have been fed red meat that's been tainted without their knowledge -- and now those who did the tainting are frustrated when the activists end up sick.


There's a limit to this, of course. Republicans are still poised to have an exceptionally good election cycle, and many of the lunatic candidates who've won primaries without the party's backing are very likely to win anyway.

But stepping, even after the GOP's expected gains, Republicans' carefully-executed strategy will leave them with (a) fewer wins than they would have had; (b) a smaller, more extreme party; (c) a base that's been taught to reject any and all compromises; and (d) a party incapable of governing effectively.

As I said earlier, Frankenstein didn't like his monster very much, but he still had to live with the consequences.

—Steve Benen
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DrToast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 09:33 AM
Response to Original message
1. Benen is one of my favorite political writers
Smart guy and always an entertaining read.
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FirstLight Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 09:35 AM
Response to Original message
2. yep
all that hard line rhetoric came back to bite them in the ass...! heehee!
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wiggs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 09:42 AM
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3. Yes, but this is really the same tactic the gop has used for years. The tea party
lies, anger, hate, smear, irrational polarization, etc are the same tools that were used when gays, brown people, black people, canadians, french, san franciscans, chicagoans, muslims, government workers, teachers, union workers, etc were marginalized for political gain in years past. It's a formula that works. This is the first time that the president and congress have been targets, IIRC. It's cheap, easy, and effective to throw a group of people under the bus in order to fundraise and get out the vote. It's disgusting, and I'm glad dems don't do it, but this tactic is very tough to defend against. It may have generated four or five crazy gop candidates that in the end will lose, but expect the hate and fear volume to be turned up (what else do they have?) and an angry electorate will turn up in november to carry many races.
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 10:42 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. The dems don't do it?
The dems have been throwing the left wing of the party under the bus for years. Using the exact same tactics, with the exact same result - a smaller, more right-wing party.

Where do you think the independents (30% of the electorate) came from? Before 1980, when both the Repubs and Dems lurched to the right, independents were not a factor to be considered - 10% at the most.

With my tinfoil hat firmly in place, I don't think it is a coincidence that the left of BOTH parties are under assault by the right of their own parties. When the Dems win over the tea baggers in November, it serves to only solidify the Dem right in place, while marginalizing the Repub left, again further shifting the entire spectrum to the right.
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wiggs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 08:57 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. I was referring to the practice of picking a group (muslims for instance) and
demonizing them in order to scare the party's base into donating money, volunteering for campaigns, turning their brains off, shouting down officials in town meetings, and voting for the biggest matching ideologue. Dems dont do it.
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RaleighNCDUer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Sep-16-10 11:07 AM
Response to Reply #7
8. "If you leftied don't vote for the Democratic candidate who can WIN,
and in the red states that means the Blue Dog, the TEABAGGERS will be running the country after November!"

We don't do that. Huh uh.
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Arugula Latte Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 11:19 AM
Response to Original message
5. Kudos to the author for the correct spelling of "sows."
:)
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opihimoimoi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Sep-15-10 12:50 PM
Response to Original message
6. KnR 18 :o)
Republicans are DRAINERS....they sap our strengths for selfish gain....

bastids
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