An excellent Boston Globe op-ed describes the current, historically bad state of the Grand Old Party, held hostage as it is by the most extreme elements of its fringe membership. I’ve even put it in graph form:
Pretty easy to gather that, compared to everybody else, Democrat and “Independent” alike, self-described Republicans hold very different views on the issues of the day. And it’s not as though, were these folks asked about immigration or abortion, they’d suddenly step back into some region of the non-lunatic spectrum. GOP identifiers largely believe (to the tune of 58%) that the President of the United States is a secret Muslim born in Kenya, after all. And that he’s furthermore planning to usher in a Socialist Empire of some sort. People are certainly entitled to their insane views; the problem is, as the article notes:
In America, we don’t really have splinter parties. When one of our parties goes crazy, it doesn’t slide to the margins.
Yep. It’s not as though this is some tiny, ad-hoc group’s take on some arcane local zoning issue we’re talking about here. This is a national party competing for the Presidency. We either need more choices, or need the GOP to sort itself out, and fast.
But, far from dusting itself off and letting some cooler heads prevail, the modern GOP just pushes the crazy meter even further along. Here’s the man that delivered the response to Obama’s joint-session address on the subject of the President’s citizenship:
STARK: What do you personally believe, I mean – do you think there’s a question [surrounding Obama’s citizenship] here?
BOUSTANY: I think there are questions, we’ll have to see.
Alright, they must have chosen Boustany because of some sort of unique ability or achievement in the healthcare and its administration in LA. Or not:
…ranked Louisiana dead last in 2008 among the 50 states for the overall health of its people, hugely because of its high percentages of people without health insurance, preventable hospitalization, infant mortality, cancer deaths, cardiovascular deaths, and overall premature deaths. The Trust for America’s Health had similar findings in its 2008 rankings. The infant mortality rate in Louisiana, according to the United Health Foundation report, is more than triple that of Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
And yet, apparently, this is the best the GOP had sitting on the bench, waiting to make an important speech to an audience who’d just watched Obama make his case.
Worth noting the ending of the afore-linked op-ed:
Maybe Democrats should be happy that Republicans have been reduced to a lunatic fringe. But the lunatics still have their seat at the table, and someday they may be sitting at its head again. What then?
Lemkin 