The all-powerful GOP "base"

Obama’s mission these days is pretty complicated. Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Middle East, health care, banks, carmakers, pirates, Guantanamo, the works.

The GOP’s mission has nothing to do with policy. Health care? They admitted they have no ideas. Budget? Hand in an empty folder and pretend a budget is in it. And so on. And if anyone else like Obama wants to mess around in that nasty policy stuff, obstruct him at all costs.

And the GOP mission has nothing to do with finding and grooming a leader. According to the polls, the party’s current prospects – Palin, Jindal et al – are heading for a crushing defeat if they run in 2012. Which begs the obvious question: why aren’t they looking for someone who can actually win and lead? Or at least walk and chew gum at the same time? But, no, that’s not what they’re about right now. Leadership is just not their thing.

No, the party’s entire mission is….to stir up the base. Laboring 25 hours a day to spew lies and smears, to stir up the base. Fearmonger tactics, to stir up the base. Conspiracy theories and incredible whoppers. almost daily, to inflame the base. It's an entire industry.

And it’s only for the base, no one else. The party is making no effort to excite moderates and independents – in fact they’re chasing them away, with every Nuremberg-like pronouncement from Cheney or Rush or Newt. Likewise they’re chasing away women and minorities. No effort to lay the groundwork with young voters. They’re even throwing brickbats at Bush, Lindsey Graham, McCain and McCain’s 200-year-old mom for insufficient loyalty to the rightwing cause.

It’s all about stirring up the base. Throw more lies at them, and listen to the base scream and yell and pound their feet. And throw tea parties.

It is only because the party’s one target audience is the loony base, that they would ever contemplate a message such as “Torture is good! Empathy is evil!”

Is it that the grownups have all left the party, leaving a bunch of demented kids who just like throwing matches at the dog, to watch him jump and bark? “What will we goad him with tomorrow – another mythical House bill giving citizenship to all illegals? Hahahahaha – he’ll jump right out of his skin!”

Or are the party leaders afraid of the base? This Frankenstein monster they created? Does that explain behaviour which otherwise would be characterized as suicidal? Is the party leadership like a bunch of terrified campers feeding all their food to an angry bear, because they know that as soon as the sandwiches and Smores stop coming, the bear will eat the campers?

“The base” is the end to every Republican conversation.

“Hey, let’s reach out to potential members!”
“Nah, the base hates them.”
“Hey, let’s take a second look at changing our policies – the national clearly hates them and they’re twenty years out of date.”
“Nah, the base likes those policies.”
“Let’s groom a leader who could win, like Crist.”
“Nah, the base would never stand for it.”

The base. Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?

How is it that control of half of our country has fallen into the hands of the stupidest among us, the mouth-breathers, the knuckle-draggers, the trailer trash, short-sighted, small-minded, mean-spirited, easy to frighten, easy to anger?

Is it just a total lack of leadership within the party itself? Do they simply lack the brains, the balls, the leadership ability to slap these ill-bred children upside the head and send them to their rooms?

The party leaders want to rule the world and they can’t even rein in the worst excesses of their worst offspring.

With no sign that the death spiral can be stopped.

And in the hands of these Hee Haw refugees, the august Republican brand, the Grand Old Party, has deteriorated from the incomparable leadership and glorious poetry of Abraham Lincoln -- with malice toward none, with charity for all, the better angels of our nature – to psychotic convict G. Gordon Liddy giggling about Sonia Sotomayor menstruating.

So how is this not the second-to-last thing before the party collapses and dies?


I'm still trying to figure these people out....