The GOP Might Wanna Think About a Different Kind of Damage Control
My word, they're hangin' on teeth and toenails, aren't they?
They must actually believe that the only reliable voters remaining in their corner are a few thousand members of the 1/10th of 1% constituting the Oligarch class, and the terrified white racist, misogynist xenophobes who will happily charge mortar fire to retrieve [Redacted]'s soiled diapers.
True, the raw demographics are emphatically not on the side of the Party as it has constructed itself in the wake of the "Reagan Revolution". Groups that have historically been skeptical of militant status-quo protectionism are a fast-growing portion of the electorate. And their traditional base is shrinking.
But the hill they chose to defend- a cobbled-together bastion of pseudo-Libertarian enabling, white Evangelical Dominionist fervor, and easily ginned-up xenophobic paranoia among aging, propaganda-addled Caucasians, all underpinned by massive infusions of Oligarch cash- is crumbling fast. And a good many of their Old Guard status-quo militants are sneaking through the lines and making for cover in the trenches.
I never exactly loved the GOPpies. But I understood the need for what they used to be-- a check on the speed of progress, a countervailing voice in the change process, the Keepers of the Flame of Established Institutions and Procedures.
Every aspect of that "what they used to be" has gotten lost in their obsession with obtaining and holding onto power at all costs. They've trashed established institutions and procedures, stridently subverted any meaningful change process with noisy propaganda, and rushed at a heedless and dangerous speed into the changes promoting their own agenda of power and greed for the smallest sector of the electorate- the ones with the money.
And now it's dawning on them that the group of die-hards on their crumbling and eroding hill is no longer enough to protect their grip on power, no matter how hard they lie, cheat, steal, and subvert the Republic. Every effort at damage control sends more of their former followers slinking under the razor wire and down the back of the hill.
Maybe it's time to try a different kind of damage control.
I'm not sure what. But I'm damn' sure that what they're doing now isn't working.
I suspect that if they want to remain viable as a Party, it's time to throw their hardline core bodily on the incoming grenades, and let the survivors take the painful Walk Into The Wilderness while they reconstitute themselves along less destructive lines and with an agenda focused more on serving the Constitution and less on protecting the proceeds of their smash-and-grab raid.
It can certainly be done.
And, given the inherent nature of the Democratic Party, they'll actually get plenty of help from a longish term of Democratic majorities in power.
The alternative- oblivion for the GOP and a long painful political and economic recession as the Democratic Party undergoes meiosis- will leave everyone poorer and more vulnerable. Yes, even the Oligarchs in their bubbles. They have no idea how fragile those bubbles really are. Let's hope they learn without the rumble of the tumbrils in the streets.
wearily,
Bright
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