Their aim is to ensure that as the party seeks to rebrand itself, it does not divert too far from its traditional values.

Of course they don’t mean the traditional values of the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, the Emancipation Proclaimation ...

Some of the comments over there DO make sense, but, like you said, “Will they listen?”.

This is basically a quest to figure out how to put the mask back on.  The core agenda is as it ever was - keep government weak enough at home that it cannot threaten the moneyed interests, but strong enough abroad to advance those interests through military force.  That’s the essential platform plank of the people with the money: everything else is just there to build a large enough coalition to win elections.

I will never support a Republican candidate who pledges to keep marriage from gays or overturn Roe v. Wade. The government has no vested interest in defining social norms, and as long as the dogma continues to trend towards Talibanesque doctrine, I won’t come back to the party.

When even the conservatives are starting to say stuff like this, you KNOW your day is over and you have officially lost.  Or, really, that we have won.  Big.

Enjoy this while it lasts. All they know how to do is destroy, and Obama hasn’t started yet so they can’t destroy him. So they’ll destroy each other for a couple of months until he can be their target again.

It’s not that they don’t have any ideas; it’s that they ran the country with their ideas for 30 years, and they have been conclusively proven not to work. The only way you paper that over is with a lot of Other-hatred.

I was thinking of going over there, but why help those crapweasels?

However, Republicans with an aesthetic bent might want to consider the implications of this painting, titled “<a href=“http://www.drawger.com/zinasaunders/?section=comments&article_id=6430’>The Morning After</a>”

I was thinking of going over there, but why help those crapweasels?

Exactly. I was thinking that I should go over and tell them that McCain wasn’t a true conservative, that they were too wimpy and moderate, and that they need to come back to their Evangelical roots. Also, say that the country is being taken over by the homosexuals and the Mexicans and that they need to DO SOMETHING about it.

Isn’t funny that each of those suggestions is essentially the same damned thing?  It’s all about getting rid of the stoopid, moralistic, demanding evangelicals.  Or at least not making the party all about them and their agenda.  It’s one good suggestion though.

I hate to tell the rich fucks who think they own the Republican Party this, but the McCain-Palin rallies and Huckabee prove they’re fucked. They let the Evangelical Base build up influence and power for their delicious hateful votes, but the Evangelicals have tasted power and have woken up to the fact that they have the numbers and for awhile now, have also been most of the source of money in the form of their mega-pastors. I see the moneyed trying to muzzle the idiots, but the idiots turning more and more to their own.

Unfortunately, it’s also possible that after 3 years of a black man competently running things in a center-left direction that they’ll be so terrified that someone somewhere is smiling that they’ll gladly hop back on the silence train and play nice with the rich bastards.

Of course, on the other hand, they turned up en masse in unison and they lost badly. And as a group, they are only getting older and smaller. And after a second competent Democrat fixing the mess, it’s likely that even idiots will be getting the message. Honestly, though, I’d rather they went the way of the dodo so that we can start building a second party from the left and actually have a proper European system.

I suspect the moderate Republicans are going to need to get used to being Democrats. Although if they can get back to center-ish, maybe the Dems can move a little to the left.

My party will stick to they’re core principles until the concept of scapegoating becomes popular again.  Then, we’ll rise like a feenix.

Ok, I couldn’t resist taking a quick peek.

The main take-away message from the front-page mission statement: “The GOP got totally pwned on the Internet in the election ... again.” Not surprising coming from the Reichstate and Clownhall crowd who were shock over how quickly President-elect Obama’s change.gov site went up. Like good little crony capitalists, I’m also sure they’re hungry for some inside dealing during the coming lean years.

Second, and more hilarious, the Paultards are now invading the site. What I thought would be a 2-way snakefight between neoCon cobras and Know-Nothing rattlers just got better with the addition of a rabid mongoose.

This is the kind of thing that’ll keep me smiling through the weekend.

I think this sentence on their website was most interesting:

And, you will soon discover, online organizing is by far the most efficient way to transform our party structures to be able to compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election campaign in 2012. (emphasis mine)

My first thought when reading that was, “They’re basically saying that the internet is nothing to be afraid of.”  Party of the future?  Not so sure.

Let’s consider a hypothetical situation for a second: imagine that the Republicans really do dump the evangelical and anti-intellectual crowd. What’s left? Ideologically consistent libertarians? The Republicans made a bargain with the Devil when they took in the religious right, and now the religious right owns them, but ironically, that very ownership is the key to their irrelevance. 30% of the electorate is not enough to dictate national policy (now that their agenda has been exposed, anyway), but 30% of 50% means that if you ditch them, you have no numbers left.

Whatever happens, I suspect the Republicans will be spending a lot of time in the wilderness. Whether they can emerge from it with a coalition that does more than just hate gays, women, and anyone with a brain remains to be seen.

I am not yet convinced that the Republicans are quite as poorly off as we are making them out to be. The popular vote was 53% Obama, 46% McCain, correct? That’s a good spread, but not really a landslide. The Democrats do not yet hold a decisive majority in the Senate. More importantly, our disgusting, immoral and sycophantic media figures still want to kneel down and kiss the feet of some strong right wingers. Things are good, much better than they were before. But we need to stay strategic.

One of the things that the republicans are going to have to contend with in the coming years is a significant shortfall in funds. Some of their heavy hitters drank the market koolade, and even that negligible top-bracket tax increase will mean that much less money available for noise-machine sinecures.

But in contrast with Pam, I hold very high hopes for that rebuilding meeting. At least hopes for continuing democratic gains.

Here I am with a bowl full of popcorn ... YEE HAAAWWW!  This trainwreck is better than NASCAR!

Dr. Kate,

are you a fascist? do you want 1 party rule?

are you a fascist? do you want 1 party rule?

Larry, Rule #1:  If you’re going to claim that someone is a fascist, you have to know how to spell the word.

Larry, there is always one ruling party.

As for one party rule, no.  It is bad enough in Massachusetts where I live - then again, people like you become Democrats in Name Only out of conformity impulse and there is tension in the primaries.

I’d much prefer three, four, six parties - whatever it takes to have a more diverse dialogue.  That tends to honestly push things to the left of the spectrum if Europe is any guide.

Haha, I wrote about this in my “pro-America” post a few weeks ago.

I’m just waiting for the party to drop something stupid and pointless from its platform, like opposition to same-sex marriage, and watch the evangelicals walk out like the Dixiecrats.

What I find most encouraging is that, as far as I can see, all the people gathering to “rebuild” the Republican party are the same ones who led it into the ditch in the first place. There’s no chance they’re actually going to do anything differently; they’re each looking to assign blame to someone else for their failure, that’s all. The GOP is most likely going to tear itself apart, and I for one am looking forward to it.

I keep hearing how the religious right is hindering the GOP, but if conservatives had one major victory last Tuesday, it was the anti-gay initiatives.  Wouldn’t it make more sense for them as a party to follow Huckabee’s path rather than Norquist’s?

Wouldn’t it make more sense for them as a party to follow Huckabee’s path rather than Norquist’s?

I agree. Christianity, as a base for a political and economic system, makes a hell of a lot more sense than libertarianism. Christian-based political systems existed for more than 1000 years in Europe. The only place libertarianism has been tried is Somalia.

That site has transmogrified into a Burning Man-type happening between Libertarians and Liberal trolls/ratfuckers. The “real” “conservatives” are barely keeping their head above water. The fact that they can barely read and write the English language doesn’t help matters.

Christian-based political systems existed for more than 1000 years in Europe.

Eh?

Precisely how would you define a “Christian-based political system”? The Bible is not internally consistent, you know. And it seems like it’d be pretty difficult to run a society wherein everyone sells everything they own and gives it to the poor only to become poor themselves. And don’t even get me started on not charging interest for loans - we’ll be in poor shape with no mortgages, car loans, credit, or banks.

Not that I’m defending the ‘dog eat dog’ nonsense of libertarianism, just saying that your statement that Europe was a “Christian-based poltical system” is laughable - there was nothing Christian about it, just a lot of Roman Emperor worship combined with the basic human instinct to grab what you can and lord it over everyone else.