Got a loose screw

What is it about President Obama that is driving all of the right-wing crazies out into the open? They say there's nothing more dangerous than a cornered, wounded animal. Latino Supreme Court nominee? Let's get a bunch of white men to call her a racist hell-bent on turning America over to illegal alien Mexicans! Abortion doctor? Kill him in church. Closing down Gitmo? The President is surrendering to Bin Laden, and releasing terrorists onto Main Street! Economic stimulus? He's a communist; let's have a Tea Party! Nancy Pelosi was briefed on torture and said the CIA misleads people? She's an evil America-hater, surrendering to the Muslims . . . and torturing them, too! 

The latest in right-wing crazy goes well beyond the "Republican Death Spiral" that Nate Silver referred to a week into the Obama presidency, where the Republicans were appearing to base their strategy on unanimously opposing everything the Obama Administration or the Democratic Congress proposed. That was just bad tactics dictated by bad politics and bad strategy. 

Republican conservatism has failed itself and America, and all by design, no less, due to an ideology that maintains that government is bad (rather than an ideology that small, competent government is good). And when government is put into the hands of people who despise the idea of government, you get bad government. Ideas have consequences. That basic theory is what drives a lot of the rational (though not necessarily smart) part of Republican thinking. By showing that government doesn't work, people will demand less government. That hasn't worked out so well, but they keep doubling down on that concept.

Moreover, the flaw with any idea that the Republican party can reform itself as a more moderate party is that those moderates have found a more comfortable home in the Democratic party - see, for example, Arlen Specter - which is the only party that welcomes the centrist fiscal conservatives and "social liberals." The process of moving the Democratic Party from McGovern-ite liberalism to their current position took the better part of a generation. While there are still prominent Democrats who are economically "liberal," who do indeed represent a number of leadership positions, that doesn't reflect all (or even a majority) of the party. Look at Bill Nelson here in Florida, or Kirsten Gillibrand who replaced Hillary Clinton as the Junior Senator from New York, or Rahm Emanuel. Or even Barack Obama, who said in his inaugural address that where government programs don't work, they should be cut.

So the Republican Party has continued to marginalize itself. Their embrace of social-issue extremism is not a reaction to a battering defeat; it is, in large part, the cause of it, and well beyond the result of Bush's incompetence. It is an ongoing behavior that has caused the Republican party to lose the hearts and minds of the youngest generation of voters during their formative years. Moreover, on the one issue that they had a claim to (however illegitimate the claim to fiscal responsibility truly was - supply side economics and the Laffer Curve? - I mean, really), they blew the budget and showed that they were even less fiscally disciplined than the Democrats that they mocked, undermining their credibility on that issue as well. 

So what, then, is the argument for Republicanism? Tea parties are not going to convince rational voters when actual Republican policymaking proves that they're really not interested in responsibility. The kind of antipathy that the Republican party has generated in the young voters is hard, if not impossible, to overcome, because the antipathy - well earned - leads to more than just a voting preference but rather to an identity. The current generation doesn't look up to Ronald Reagan - he's no more than a myth to them (he wasn't much more than that during his presidency, either, but he was a good story and it worked for the right), and he's not a relevant myth anymore, at that. The Republican Party isn't the Party of Reagan, any more than it's the Party of Eisenhower or Lincoln. Invoking those legends of Republican history only serves to shine a spotlight on how far the party has fallen. People of the caliber of Newt, Rush, Cheney, of Coulter, Malkin and O'Reilly, of Buchanan, Rove and Cantor, should know better than drawing a comparison with people known (rightly or wrongly) for dignity and decency.

But all of that is nothing compared to the direction that the Republicans, given face by Newt and Rush and through the actions of elected officials and common on-the-street Republicans, are headed. By losing their link to any semblance of policy, they have also lost their link to any semblance of sanity. Reeling from being rudderless, they have turned instead to being completely unhinged. The goal appears to be to alienate - and oftentimes harm - every group they can identify. 

This is beyond politics. It's a reflection that the Republican Party is rotten to the core. Which I already knew, but had been amazed for years at the way they were able to convince people (David Broder?) otherwise. But now, they're not even trying. No more masks, despite what David Brooks' calm demeanor would have you believe (who knows how much longer Brooks will be able to claim to stand in that tent; Broder, on the other hand, will continue to believe that the failure to adopt their views is evidence of liberal partisanship). 

Can the conservative movement even be sustainable when they can't pretend that they're above this stuff? In a perverse way, I hope not. It's a movement that deserves to be discredited. But it's pretty sad that it has come to this, and that it is going to take the fringe some time to either change course or fall deeper into the abyss, and probably cause more destruction along the way.