"You know, some part of the Republican Party doesn't get it at all. Another part gets it, but is afraid to do anything. And a small portion gets it and wants to do something, but doesn't have the support to enact the changes needed."

That sums it up about as well as I've ever seen it.

Damn you Freud.

WIth Cornyn in charge, Democrats can rest easy. He's tied with James Inhofe for Dumbest Senator Evah.

Well, you know, I was a Republican for a long time. In fact, my first job out of college was working for the RNC.

I realized back in '01 that the party was only going to get worse. You could see it coming for years. Hell, the last couple of county meetings I attended were like f-ing prayer meetings. I was like, what the hell's up with this?????

I concluded that there was no hope for changing the nature of the party in the short or medium term. Only a fairly lengthly series of electoral defeats will do that.

Most sane people aren't up for it. Why should they be? They didn't create the mess.

Conservatives used to stand athwart history and shout, "Stop!" Now they stand athwart history and say, "Duh?"

The party position is to support torture? Seriously?
The party position is to deny observable, falsifiable, repeatable science? Are you sure?
The party position is to deny rights to loving couples just because of your personal "ick" factor? Is this how you want to be remembered?

Until the ideas of conservativism and Republicanism disentangle, they will both remain anachronistic.

I am almost what you call a senior citizen and I don't want to sound like some old geezer, but I am in the age in range of many members of Congress and much of the established punduntry in D.C. I remember as far back as junior high school my teachers were teaching critical thinking, analysis of arguements and what is fact and what is perposterous. The GOP is spinning perposterous swill and the media is treating it as legitimate discourse. What happened to quality educated dialogue?

"Reminds me of the Dems not too very long ago."

I don't agree with this. The Democrats have had their problems, no doubt about it. I have been closely following politics for more than 35 years, including working as a political consultant, running campaigns and working as a political journalist and I have never seen anything like this.

George Bush did not win his first election and, according to some research, possibly did not win the second time. That is a far cry from Obama's historic victory. The Democrats were never marginalized in the way the Republicans are now. In fact, the Bush Administration had to work to cut the Democrats out of things --the situation today has President Obama trying to include Republicans. It is a very different situation.

Democrats had problems, Republicans have nothing.

And I've been following politics for 60 or so years. But it is foreign politics where I see a place for comparison. No matter what people argue (to be "nice," to give 'em a "break," etc) the Bush/Cheney years will go down as the closest this country came to fascism since its founding. Military running foreign policy, privileged large corporations handpicked without competition for work, significant deletion of personal rights - the whole schmear! Notice that the fascist parties around the world first demanded absolute loyalty, then reduced their guidelines for loyalty. Rather than broadening the base, it was circle the wagons! Then disaster, collapse... and hope for the phoenix effect. Same now! You cannot liberalize, or make popular an authoritarian party in a democracy. Thank God the danger has passed to the democracy! Too bad about the Republicans.

I'm loving this - to quote something completely irrelevant.... The problem with our friends from the other side (of the aisle) is the same problem the Whigs must have experienced in 1856: "Why do I still exist?" and, like the former party tied to the initial W, they appear to be having a response somewhere between Alvin the Chipmunk and Bozo the - well, you know who he is.

That response goes something like this: "My nose is red. My voice is high. I'm drunk and hysterical, oh why, oh why?"

Seriously, tho, the Republican Party may be dealing itself out of existence. Every day, I read true fruitcakes, from Palin to Limbaugh, from Bachman to Coleman, from Steele ... Do you even believe this guy? ... to Santa Claus, I guess, saying fantastic idiocy worthy of Mussolini in his bombastic phase ... (Actually, I don't think he had another phase.)

If the Republican party is on it's way to a Regional Homeland, perhaps Guantanamo would be good. After all, it is 4 Star, as one of them said.

National Party? Does that mean they are going to recruit black people, red people, brown and yellow people? Pro- choice people? Biracial people? Gay people? Intelligent people? Non-NRA supporters? Pro ACLU supporters? Muslims? Jewish people?Agnostics? Atheists?

Who am I leaving out?

Oooh, non paranoid, crazy people!
Anybody else

This is all wishful thinking. The GOP has two things going for it-- a vise-like grip on the willingness to use patriotism/nationalism as a real weapon AND the allegiance of a very hard core group of activists willing to wait, patiently, for an opening.

Sure, right now, things look bleak for the GOP. But give us a terrorist strike, or some other concocted, fabricated threat to the "Homeland" and fear and loathing will again be on the march.

See virtually every other nationalist nation on the face of the globe and throughout history for other examples. At the risk of offending Mr. Godwin, see Germany in the twenties, Japan in the early twenties, France in the 1790s . . . the right wing, the bastion of patriotic hatred just lies in wait and pounces and regains power on the tattered bones of the fearful . . .

The vast majority of Americans are worried about their future, about their economy and are mistrustful of foreigners, be they Islam or otherwise as being related to the problem. Simply point out a convenient scapegoat and many of the reasonable masses will become willing audiences for and then activists for the anger to be unleashed. I wish we could kill this ideology--but patriotism (and religion) are the last refuge of the real scoundrel and the real scoundrels are the meanest, angriest, most vicious, power-hungry, amoral killers in the world. Given our economic turmoil and we really are only one serious crisis away from the precipice. mbb

Once the country progresses I don't believe it will ever return to the strict ideology of the Republican party. Example: it wasn't that long ago that mixed race marriages were against the law in many states (such as Obama's parents). That thinking seems centuries old now. The same will happen with same sex marriage. The country has moved on into a new century and the Republicans are cemented in the last century.

Japan and Germany were not democracies. I believe Democracy moves forward.

So much for the Grand Old Party....more like Ghastly Obscure Party.

For decades the GOP has been an unnatural alliance between the ultra-capitalist right that rejects good government and democracy, the christian conservative right that rejects science and historical truth, and the poorly educated and resentful whites on the far right who don't understand anything that's happening around them. None of the three have anything in common beyond their contempt for the country - despite their pretense of patriotism. It couldn't last. The GOP cannot recreate itself in any way that would hold such a coalition together. They're toast and the two party system may be, too - and that may not be a bad thing.

To me, the most alarming thing if you're a Republican is their polling numbers among Latinos and the prevalence in their base of the hard core anti-immigrant folks. If Latinos continue to vote the way did in this past election I don't see how Republicans can win national elections. If you add in African-americans, they start out ceding almost 30% of the electorate and major swaths of the country. Something's gonna have to give. Either they offend their base who are intensely dug-in and extreme on immigration or they become a rural, regional party. Apart from smacking of racism and xenophobia, their current stance seems like political suicide.