I’m going to rant a bit:
The political party that barfed up the hairball that is Sarah Palin, helmed by Michael Keepin’ it Real Steele–or depending on the time of day–Rush Limbaugh (the talk radio equivalent of government cheese) has bought the proverbial farm. Dead. Teets up, like Colonel Sanders and Ayn Rand.
The latent racism…err…immigration reform, culture wars, senseless real wars, homophobia, greedy deregulation, trickle-down (i.e. pissing on middle class heads) economics, spreading democracy one smart bomb at a time, and other sundry GOP asshattery has brought about their inevitable (and overdue) demise. Of course, having a semi-sentient uber-douche like George W. Bush as the party’s figurehead for eight long years didn’t help much either. Think The Godfather meets Deliverance. Nope, that movie doesn’t end well.
It’s official, and backed by some serious social science: the Republican Party sucks.
A growing number of political scientists, analysts and strategists are making the case for a realignment of political power in the U.S. to a new Democratic majority …
It’s not all the GOP fuck-ups that have paved a way to more progressive America. It’s largely some basic, painfully obvious demographics trends. More and more black and Hispanic voters, traditionally left in the cold by the modern GOP, are coming to the polls. Not surprisingly, they’re fucking pissed off. Sorry Steele, ya’ll are too “on the hook” to “off the hook” your way out of that particular shiznit. Good luck getting down with your bad self.
On April 9, 2009, Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz published a paper arguing that Obama’s victory “was made possible by long-term changes in the composition of the American electorate, especially the growing voting power of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other nonwhites. As a result of these demographic changes, the Democratic Party enjoys a large advantage over the Republican Party in the size of its electoral base — an advantage that is almost certain to continue growing for the foreseeable future.”
It’s not just the minorities, but the generally well-educated suburbanites who once formed the backbone of the party who are abandoning ship faster than a new crop of Somali pirates facing a bevy of Navy Seal snipers.
In a March, 2009 51-page paper New Progressive America: Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority, Ruy Teixeira makes a strong case that “progressive arguments are in the ascendancy,” that demographic and geographic “trends should take America down a very different road than has been traveled in the last eight years. A new progressive America is on the rise.”
It’s about time. For my entire adult life, the GOP has been little but a collection of increasingly kooky interest groups bereft of ideas. They’re recognizable more by their campaign tactics than their “big gubment sucks” ideology. Hey, Turdblossom: tell me about that “permanent Republican Majority” again? Teixeira supports his position with the help of a cool little interactive map that includes exit poll demographics and county-level vote shifts going all the way back to 1988. Conservatives still love to point to the broad swaths of Repub Red that paint the country. Ummm, fellas? One little problem with that: there are hardly any fucking people in those places. The GOP is the minority. Booya!
Even James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, has had to admit the fat lady is cleaning her pipes and signaling the orchestra:
We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action. We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.
Humanly speaking, it’s remarkably inhuman of Dobson to have never considered the possibility that nearly everything he believes is inherently wrong. By the way, I’m not sure that using the intertubes to solicit minors for sex is what Dobson meant by “Focus”, but I digress.
Even if Dobson wants to cut-and-run like a French surrender monkey, there are still plenty of misguided Republicans willing to continue the fight for…well, you know, whatever it is the GOP stands for. As of today, I think the cause has something vaguely to do with the socialist takeover of ‘Merica by the evil triumvirate of Obama/Reid/Pelosi. Or maybe it’s the whole “they wanna take my guns away, Mamma!” thing. I can’t keep track.
To express the raw power of their dissent, a “grass roots” movement (see Outrage, Manufactured) is all the rage these days with goofy old white people. Never mind that they’ve decided to call this faux uprising Tea Bagging (the ultimate face/palm inducing maneuver from the Step on a Rake School of Stupijitsu), or that the analogy to the Boston Tea Party makes no fucking sense. At least they get to play Colonial dress up. Note to self: Skeletor Guiliani is no longer the only Republican who can get away with wearing a wig in public.
The way I see it, all progressives need to do is avoid becoming our own worst enemy. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Let’s not become what we despise: polarizing assbites. We’ve finally got the chance to lead, so let’s try to do it right. This concludes my rant. Oh wait, I’ve just one last item I want to address: Franken fucking won. Suck it, Norm. Have yourself some Freedom Fries, and go on home. Dickhead.
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