In this ongoing travesty called Republican debates, the National Republican Party is being ripped apart at the seams.
During debates, I expect to hear strong policy positions, not sandbox-brat nonsense in which adults suddenly morph into mud-slinging hooligans.
It’s a shame the reasonable candidates (Jeb Bush, John Kasich) have been neglected. Bush caved; Kasich is hanging in there. Kasich is far and away the best and most qualified candidate to be president on the Republican side. But, as I’ve predicted so many times, the Tea Partiers’ hijacking of the Party will make a White House win less likely.
The current war is the direct result of those Tea-Party radicals (“wacko-birds,” as Sen. John McCain called one of them, Ted Cruz). And now, in this primary season, it’s become apparent the radicals have so stretched and warped the Party like Turkish taffy that sane, rational candidates couldn’t stand a chance. Good candidates with true experience and vision (Kasich, for one) have been trumped because the Party has so long cuddled up to extremist obstructionist-destroyers that its very future is jeopardized. It’s their own faults. If you doubt this, just go ask former Speaker of the House John Boehner or the other good Republicans that ultra-right-wing “purists” have “primaried” out of political existence.
Donald Trump, like an opportunistic scavenger, smelled blood (Republican fractures) and barged in for the pickings. What has resulted is a cannibalization process fed by roaring rancor, a bloodbath of name-calling, of candidates determined to devour one another. Trump is the ultimate Wacko-Bird that morphed into the Fox in the Chicken Coop. And Trump is not the only problem the Republican Party faces; it’s the two other candidates, Cruz and Rubio. Neither has any cohesive, rational policy positions – at least not winnable ones.
This ugly Party war stems all the way back to Barry Goldwater and his extremist pronouncements in 1964 when he was trounced by Lyndon Johnson. As political scholar E.J. Dionne details it so well in his recent book, How the Right Went Wrong, Goldwater unwittingly set the ideological quicksand trap in which far-out conservative promises became impossible to deliver as this country moved into the future with many progressive changes that benefited so many people, including conservatives and their loved ones. Medicare (1965) is just one example. Right-wing extremists resisted those changes tooth-and-claw and promised to abolish them but knew they couldn’t because too many people (prospective voters) liked the changes, including many middle-class Republicans. The diehard conservatives were stuck time and again between a rock (their promises) and a hard place (social reality). Charles Darwin said it best: Those who cannot adapt, die.
The most extreme of the Republicans are completely resistant to any but their own pet policies: dismantling “big” government, total deregulation of free enterprise, tax cuts for the corporate rich, eradication of ObamaCare, total defunding of Planned Parenthood, resistance to social changes. They are still true believers in the ol’ tried-and-untrue Trickle-Down Theory (aka supply-side economics), which has failed abysmally since the 1980s. Wealth didn’t trickle down; it gushed up. (surprise, surprise). Economic inequality, which seems to be the soupe du jour these days, cannot be lessened by more tax cuts for the rich. Enter Bernie Sanders.
Right-wingers who deify President Reagan seem to forget he wasn’t quite the hard-nosed conservative they love to think he was. He was often willing to compromise with Democrats, something these ultra-right-wing naysayers stubbornly refuse to do. So there they sit, doing nothing, blaming Obama for every problem that comes down the pike, including – go figure – the rise of Bernie Sanders.
Successful Republican presidents (Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush I) were more or less centrists, long before wacko birds yanked the Party to the extreme right where nothing can get done. Democrats learned that the hard way. Anybody remember George McGovern?
These name-callers will keep stumbling on their path of futility because they apparently have no plans for the nation’s problems. When they’re not trashing one another, they’re managing to find a bit of free time to blast the Democrats. Sanders is an ungodly socialist; Clinton is a sneaky liar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
As a columnist, I have been frequently slammed by some letter-to-editor writers for my name-calling against extremist right-wingers. Tit-for-tat; good for the goose, good for the gander. As name-callers, they and their Hate Radio cheerleaders have me beat by a mile. It’s so nice, for a change, to kick back and let these name-calling cannibals do my job for me.
