...magazine covers that is.
Recent history and current state of the (snark on) integrity, intelligence level, popularity and profundity of the modern American Republican Party as revealed by the cover stories featured in Time Magazine over the past decade.
The punchline comes at the end. No matter your opinion on Time Magazine, they could not but help invariably reaeal the true character of the GOP.
June 2001:
October 2003:
February 2004:
September 2005:
July 2006:
October 2006:
November 2006:
March 2007:
March 2007:
December 2007:
September 2008:
August 2009:
October 2009:
Yeah, that last one pretty much brings it all up-to-date. Unfortunately for our purpose here, Time hasn't featured a cover of Rush Limbaugh bouncing up and down at the CPAC conference or a cover of Joe Wilson yelling
'Sit down and shut up, boy!' 'You lie!' but a cover shot of an
irresponsible and juvenile radio charlatan about covers it. (By the way, the Glenn Beck article itself is
useless.) And as Beck is now the de facto face of the right-wing, when Howard Dean
describes his ilk as "not good human beings," it's not too much of a stretch to extrapolate the characterization to pretty much the rest of the party well into the future.