Blazing Tattles

Politico's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen--the Beltway's durable duo of convention über wisdom--boldly title their latest expose "The GOP, Fox political purge," which, as any lover of internecine bloodbaths would note, promises the thrill of a veritable reign of terror and gushing catharsis, but quickly reduces to a paper cut:

One high-profile Republican strategist, who refused to be named in order to avoid inflaming the very segments of the party he wants to silence, said there is a deliberate effort by party leaders to "marginalize the cranks, haters and bigots--there’s a lot of underbrush that has to be cleaned out."

Yeah, you got it. Think Mongo.

I sympathize not with our anonymous Republican strategist. The crankification of the GOP has been a wretched whirlpool of hatred and bigotry long in the making--a despicable process needlessly prolonged by mealy-mouthed, high-profile poltroons who have "refused to be named in order to avoid inflaming the very segments of the party [they want] to silence."

It's time to overtly cut the crap, to cease whispering unmentionables to the bland VandeHeis and Allens, and to start bellowing named denunciations with terrible abandon.

The GOP brand has gone from dog food to rat poison in a mere four years. And for the party's marketing strategists to think they can stage a tea-party purge as a tea-party social is a damnable obscenity to all lovers of Machiavellian bloodbaths and America's two-party system.

Comments

[shsavage]

Capone managed it quite well--with a baseball bat...

[Robert Lipscomb]

There is a point that the Club For Growth Republican leaders cannot seem to grasp. When they tell a "politically incorrect" race joke, they are just going for a cheap laugh - and they know it. The same applies to all the other demographic-based jokes born of the Culture Wars. What they do not get, what they cannot internalize is that those millions inside their party BELIEVE this stuff and are totally COMMITTED to this stuff.

The Club For rowth guys think if they just stop telling the jokes, this will all go away. Their haters know they are being thrown under the bus. They will not quietly go away.

[AnneJ]

The republican party brought this on themselves decades ago, ending in their full throated embrace of the tea party in 2010, and now they are trying to silence them. Why bother? The party establishment may not be as brash as the tea party cranks, but they still hold the same positions and that's the part they haven't seemed to figure out yet. To them it's still all about abolishing social programs, invading the female reproductive system, and comparing gays to pedophiles, they are just trying to find fancier words to try and cover up their true agenda, and rigging elections in their favor. Might as well keep the cranks and go down with the GOP ship.

[japa21]

The only way the GOP can regain any credibility with the middle of the country (political middle, not geographical) is if the people who see the underbrush as a problem talk about it openly and not anonymously.

As Robert says, the haters know they are being thrown under the bus, but until party leadership, including people in Congress, come out and say something, the country as a whole won't realize it.

[Turgidson]

Agreed with all of the above.

Mittens basically had to lie nonstop to obscure the party's actual agenda, and fortunately it wasn't good enough. Given that it was still a relatively close election, I do sometimes wonder if a more charming liar could have won the thing though. Mittens was uniquely distasteful even for an asshole Republican.

In any event, the Republicans have their naughty bits stuck in a vice of their own making. Make a public break with the freak show, and they risk having their base go third party, or at least apathetic, for a couple cycles. Keep the freaks happy and the general electorate will continue slipping away from them. They did it to themselves pandering to knuckledraggers and deliberately keeping them angry and scared. It's about freaking time they face a reckoning. I'll believe it when I see it, though. I heard a lot about how the GOP would need to spend a long time in the wilderness after the 2008 election too. And 2010 happened. The GOP has a knack for figuring out how to close ranks when its back is against the wall.