The GOP Jihad Targetting Moderates

Typically, I would discredit Rolling Stone and claim it has no redeemable value to society. After reading it for the past couple of months, I'm willing to reverse course. The current issue features articles on Steve Earle, Cornel West, and a dandy piece, "The GOP Jihad," by Tim Dickinson. Dickinson examines the purge of moderates from the increasingly-adrift GOP who cling to shrinking hope of a 1994 reconquista of Congress. As the article points out, the conditions in 1994 and 2010 are wholly different and a 1-2-3-Contract with America replication is unlikely to occur, despite Eric Cantor's and Newt Gingrich's star-eyed dreams, based on flagging number of registered Republicans and the general downward trajectory for Republicans in the past four years. As the NYT reports today, the GOP is betting on a robust fight against Obama's dreaded liberal, activist judges to reinvigorate the party ahead of the coming fight on health care, energy, and defense spending.

Dickinson rightly highlights how moderates such as Tim Pawlenty, Charlie Crist, soon to be Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, and The Governator are maligned from within the Republican Party by pearls such as Grover Norquist, Club for Growth, and Dick Armey's American Solutions--the latter of which organized, advertised, and managed the "tea parties." Of course, Bobby Jindall, Sarah Palin, Mark Sanford, and Mike Huckabee are plotted as the dream future. All of which, along with Newty, will run for the 2012 spot for president.

Dickinson's notable strike is on the romanticism of defeat coursing through the GOP. His final quote displays this ridiculous sentiment with a emblematic quote from Mark Sanford:

"I ask Sanford if the retrat to the core--at a time when Americans are looking for, if not a handout, at least a hand up--threatens to relegate the GOP to political irrelevance for the foreseeable future. 'I suppose it does,' he says simply. 'And I can live with that.'"

Wow. He's also the responsible governor who wants to refuse stimulus money to help schools and out of work South Carolinians. The head in the sand and scorched earth mentality of these people is not only disturbing, it's downright appalling. I could care less if he's willing to consign the GOP to the dustbin; what this amounts to is a wholesale desire to let the system and people fail. Everyone knows that Rush's comments regarding his lust to see the President fail meant more than President Obama's agenda failing. It would require the destruction of this country--a cataclysmic event that would ruin the working- and middle-class (not to mention the poor) but also set the US and world back decades in hopes of constructing a conservative utopia.