Whig-ing Out

John Boehner has had enough.  He's taking his Orange Julius toner and heading back home, tired of having to babysit the unruly daycare which is the House GOP majority; a delusional, self-serving, herd of Machiavellian, grandstanding bullies.  Some ask what took him so long, but as the country ponders what comes next for the House leadership, Boehner's resignation symbolizes an undeniable reality coming into focus; the days of the Republican Party being a functioning political entity are nearly over, and to avoid the end of the party itself will require a sobering, Herculean, near impossible fundamental core change.

I know many will read this and insist I'm being melodramatic, or just a loony leftie trying to stir up controversy.  If you only think of me as a political hack, it's easy to brush me aside, but in truth, I don't want to see the Republican Party die.  Eighties era Republicans had some ideas I liked.  They were more socially liberal than today, and occasionally kept the Democrats from making mistakes by demanding a more conservative compromise.  I still have some political leanings which are more in tune with the moderate GOP of my youth, but like most of America, the current Republican Party represent nothing I can relate to.

This GOP mess can be traced back to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's desire for power and money.  Back in 1992, when Ralph Reed offered George H.W. Bush, and the Republicans, the Christian Coalition as loyal foot soldiers, they were told to go away.  The Republicans knew the trade off would be too great, subjecting the party to an undercurrent of the personal agenda of a religious zealot and his followers.  They knew the 'bad' of such an alliance would grossly outweigh the 'good.'

Rove and Cheney are world class, self-serving, slime balls.  They grasped onto George W. Bush, knowing they could never achieve the power and money they desired by themselves, so by hitching their wagons to W., they set up a trajectory which would deliver what they worshipped.  To make their fantasies happen, they needed to recruit loyal foot soldiers; idiots who would believe their distorted lies as facts, fight the battles they were told to fight, and always blame and vilify the people they were told to hate.  They went to bizarre and preposterous houses of worship, which were led by power hungry narcissists.  They went to undisguised bigots; groups who were looking for more reasons to hate the races, religions and people they cursed.  They went to paranoid and silly compounds in rural America, which festered with anti-government lunacy.  They embraced, greedy, senseless, pseudo-libertarians who insisted they could somehow maintain the lifestyle they enjoy, but ignorantly contented they didn't need to pay for it.  It's these four stupid horsemen of the deranged Apocalypse they recruited, knowing it would lead to the ruin of the Republican party, but since they would be long gone when it eventually happened, they didn't care.  They were only in it for themselves.

It worked like a charm for two elections, but when the inevitable happened, and Rove and Cheney left office with no control of W.'s replacement, they abandoned their foot soldiers, flushing them into the sewer like an unwanted pet sucker fish. This unwieldy, confused, jumbled mass loved the taste of power they had under W., so they organized into the Tea Party.  By focusing on their never ending ability to turn themselves into a victim, an irrational distrust of the US government, and by embracing the bigoted hatred of President Obama, Latinos, gays and anyone else they never liked, they became a scorched earth weapon, a weapon political novices sought to wield.  As more politicians tried to woo them, their power grew. They initially blamed the moderate Republicans for losing the White House in 2008, and quickly ran them out of the party with screams of "RINO!" (Republican In Name Only).

Since 2010, after the Tea Party wrongly interpreted the traditional mid-term election downturn for the incumbent party as some sort of manifest destiny, the GOP has been stymied by the far right's platform largess, but because these dolts have a knee-jerk defense system which tells them they're never wrong, they started to look for whom else they could blame for their failures, namely not winning back the White House in 2012 and the inability of the current GOP to make President Obama do everything they want.  Their loose cannons started targeting the traditional Republicans, Reagan disciples who looked liberal from the extreme far right's vantage point.  They cheered at the Values Voter's summit at the news that Boehner, their great orange whale, had been vanquished, looking to embrace a new Speaker of the House who would do the impossible, force the President to do their their bidding.

This is not going to stop.  My guess is eventually the pro war Christians (yeah, I know), the 'not fooling anyone' racists, and the anti government establishment will turn on each other and the Republican Party will eventually cease to exist.

There is a comparable moment in American history to all of this.  The demise of the Whig Party in the 1850's was due to internal conflict as well.  People like Henry Clay and Millard Fillmore were trying to find ways to continue slavery in some states, but not in others.  Zachary Taylor and Daniel Webster (both who were conflicted at times themselves) were against the idea of continued slavery expansion, and party members like Abraham Lincoln, who were against the idea of slavery all together, where slowly leaving, or being pushed out of, the party.  The Whigs had the Presidency from 1849 to 1853, but by 1860, the party had mainly ceased to exist.

What can sane Republicans do today?  Not too much.  They either have to A) be quiet, nod their heads in agreement, and vote along with the crazy train to avoid being primaried out of politics, B) quit, and either leave politics or join the Democrats or an Independent Party.  If they have some opinions that are more attuned to the Democrats, it might be a good fit (The Democratic Party has shifted far the right as well, so it's not that hard of a reach.  Think Collin Peterson and Tom Bakk), but other more traditional Democratic positions might be harder for them to embrace.  As far as Independent Parties, they are generally feast or famine depending on the election cycle, C) form a new party, which is what happened to the Whigs.  Their demise lead to the Republican Party (and great legacies from Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower, and a 150 year run, which ironically could be over soon), or D) you could try to save the party with tough love.

The final option means this: for the elections in 2016, 2018, and 2020, traditional Republicans, and any moderates left, need to turn their back on the GOP in it's current form.  Don't blindly vote 'R,' don't write checks for candidates you mainly disagree with, and don't accept the party's embarrassing platform, written from a position of bigotry and hatred.  You HAVE TO sit out these three elections, not just one.  After the party fails to win in 2016, the loonies will be looking to blame all non-Tea Partiers.  By failing again in 2018, the far right establishment will lash out in an even more desperate and violent fashion.  Then, by failing in 2020, the census year, the redistricting year, the gerrymandered House falls, and with it, the enabling of the reckless right.

Yes, to save the Republican Party, the GOP needs to lose control of the US House.  What is fueling these extremists is the creation of safe districts which allow a Louie Gohmert and a Steve King to run with very little consequences for their actions.  The entire GOP system needs to be broken down to it's base core.  You can't primary these people as the system is rigged for them to win.  You can't outspend them as the money people who bankroll the far right today don't want independent thought.  You have to break the party down and pick up the pieces worth saving, while throwing out the elements which should've never been part of the party in the first place.

The Democrats shouldn't just sit idly back and think they're off the hook for the next three elections.  A major reason the Republican Party emerged out of the 1850's was because of inferior Democratic candidates and positions as well.  Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were horrible Presidents, both elected because the Democrats felt like they didn't have to try.  Both also dealt with the slavery issue by putting their fingers in their ears and screaming "I can't hear you!"  If the GOP doesn't fix itself, and if the Democrats run bad candidates, you're only asking for the disenfranchised traditional and moderate Republicans to start up a third party, a party which will take the Independents and moderate Democrats along with them.

One thing which is definite.  When you look at the George W. Bush administration, and their failure to stop 9/11, their torture campaign, the invasion of a country under false pretenses, the creation of ISIS due directly to their consistent bad foreign policy, their horrific economic decisions, their ineptitude with Katrina and their part in imploding the world's economy, and then you add their likely destruction of their own political party to boot, how can you not consider them the worst administration of all time?  But Rove and Cheney, they don't care.  Their rallying cry, and the rallying cry of their ilk, has always been, "Screw you, we got ours!"