“In 2002 and 2004, Republicans ran hard on social issues and the courts — and scored victories at every level of politics.”

Yes, because in the wake of 9/11, people were very easily stirred to lash out against anyone they considered an enemy, whether that was “liberals” or “gays.”

I really put the end of the Republican Party at the federal response to Katrina.  That complete fuck-up made a lot of people who’d supported Republicans realize that it wasn’t that the Republicans would be harsh with our enemies but protect Americans.  They realized that the Republicans had no intention of protecting their fellow Americans from harm, either.

If Katrina had happened in 2003 or 2004, the election results of 2004 would have been very different, because the conservatives I knew were PISSED that the feds didn’t lift a finger to help.

DEMONcraps insistence on recreational abortions being made manditory (with gift certificates) is responsible for the USA of America being made into a gay caliphate. That and the fluoride chemtrails.

Even if we take Ponnuru’s argument at face value, there’s a schism that has to be acknowledged there between the corporate and fundamentalist wings of the party. They’re trying to do each other like they’ve done the Democrats for decades - don’t retreat an inch, demonize at every turn. So the crackup should be good.

Is he kidding? Republicans trotted out their tried-and-true “let’s drag gay marriage onto the ballot to turn out the base” stuff in the 2008 election. It didn’t work because the electorate was so fucking sick of the mess Republicans have made of everything that even people who voted against gay marriage voted for Obama.

If the next four to eight years go well i can almost guaranteeyou will hear right wing talkers say it was because Obama governed as a conservative.

He “just wishes the intelligence had been better.”

As usual, he is sincerely sorry that SOMEONE ELSE screwed up.

This is classic alcoholic behavior, and I really wish that just once someone on the national stage would notice.

“If the next four to eight years go well i can almost guaranteeyou will hear right wing talkers say it was because Obama governed as a conservative.”

That’s not really a stretch, since they’re already saying that the guy who they were calling a Marxist Nov. 3 won on Nov. 4 because he was a conservative.

You see exactly this same utter denial of reality in every totalitarian movement. In Stalin’s USSR in the ‘30s, the country wasn’t completely fucked up because of gross incompetence or the complete moral and ethical bankruptcy of their socio-economic structure, it was because there were “wreckers” and “saboteurs” infesting the entire infrastructure, and because the people in charge weren’t good enough Bolsheviks. The possibility that maybe Stalin and the Politburo didn’t know what the fuck they were doing and didn’t have any business whatsoever running a large country was literally never even considered.

There’s a reason that Republicans are going to take forever to change what’s wrong with their party - the party’s constituted of magnificent liars with an unbelievable capacity for denial.

Go Jesse! That’s the reason why we’re probably watching a major political party go the way of the Whigs—stated as succinctly as I’ve ever seen.

This is spot on. The Rethugs wont admit they are wrong and when someone in their circle starts to think for themselves they attack that person. See K. Parker. They wont ever admit anything is wrong until they crack up the whole party. Then it will be an opportunity to blame someone else. Sure glad I have a ringside seat.

“The possibility that maybe Stalin and the Politburo didn’t know what the fuck they were doing and didn’t have any business whatsoever running a large country was literally never even considered. “

Wasn’t that true of the Czar’s as well?

To be honest life under Lenin, Stalin wasn’t that different then life under the Czar’s. All property in the Czarist Russia belonged to the Czars while under Communism all property belonged to the goverment.

The Soviet Communists had far more in common with Conservative Americans then did the supposed liberal America which the Soviet Union detested.

Heck the Soviets put gays into gulags, as well as teachers and scientists who promoted evolutionary biology along with other supposed liberal teachings.

Fear is the key
In today’s L.A. Times, Neal Gabler has an article that analyzes exactly what “conservative” Republicans have been doing, tracing their strategy back to Senator McCarthy, not to Senator Goldwater, who in 1964 lost in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history and wrested the party from its Eastern establishment wing.

According to Gabler, the myth tells how Nixon co-opted conservatism, talking like a conservative while governing like a moderate, disenchanting true believers. Ronald Reagan, next, embraced it wholeheartedly, becoming the patron saint of conservatism and making it the dominant ideology in the country, even though he didn’t practice it in terms of fiscal responsibility or size of government. George W. Bush picked up Reagan’s fallen standard and “conservatized” government even more thoroughly than Reagan had, cheering conservatives until his presidency came crashing down around him. That’s how Gabler believes the mythology tells it.

Gabler’s thesis is that the real connection is from Sen. Joe McCarthy, to Nixon to Bush and possibly now to Sarah Palin. McCarthy attacked alleged communists and the Democrats whom he accused of shielding them, as well as the centrist American establishment, Eastern intellectuals and the power class, many of whom were Republicans, including moderate ones. McCarthyism became a means to play on the anxieties of Americans, convincing them of danger and conspiracy even when they didn’t exist, which he used to build power and support. George H.W. Bush used it to get himself elected, terrifying voters with Willie Horton (and denigrating Dukakis as a commander-in-chief). His son used fear of 9/11 and convincing voters that John Kerry was a coward and a liar and would hand the nation over to terrorists, tried and true McCarthy tactics used very aggressively, and W. then used fear and stealth in pushing through totalitarian unconstitutional measures. The thread continued through McCain and then Palin, probably through Rove (who also coached W.), and I quote from Gabler, “That’s why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama’s relationship with onetime radical William Ayers.”

What Gabler believes is that, because of this tradition, the Republican Party will continue to move rightward. Fear and blame; rabble-rousing; the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Bill O’Reillys; and now Palin. This is the direction the Party will take. Probably because it cannot be believed as the party of small government or fiscal responsibility or moral integrity; all credibility lost in the harsh reality of events; at least not until people forget and these actualities become memories and fade. It is a dangerous approach because it incites people to do violent things, especially as times become more stringent.

It is, I believe a shame, because some of the original precepts of fiscal responsibility and keeping government out of peoples’ lives and moral integrity are well worth preserving. The Republican Party which stood for those princples was a Grand Old Party. But, I hate to say it, those are all too easily trumped by fear-mongering and, I might add, difficult to achieve. I would nominate the Republican Party today as the Party of Fear, as opposed to the Party of Solutions. And, if that’s the direction it’s going in, yes, it’s a shame.

For more, see: www.ocpatriot-runningcomments.blogspot.com.

There’s a reason that Republicans are going to take forever to change what’s wrong with their party - the party’s constituted of magnificent liars with an unbelievable capacity for denial.  Republicans never, ever lose.  Ever.  Republicans don’t fail, it’s that losers calling themselves Republican just aren’t Republican enough.  And when you take that core idea and then translate it to the many factions of the Republican Party fighting with each other, it becomes difficult to see how they’re going to rectify a schism that requires someone, at some point, to admit failure.

What a wonderful vision for the future of politics in this country.  I hope it comes true.

@OCPatriot: What you are describing is also known as “the paranoid style” or “right-wing authoritarianism”.