You May Wish it Had, but the GOP Crazy Train Has Not Arrived at its Destination

All aboard the Crazy Train

All aboard the Crazy Train

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) made a legitimate point when she told NBC News’ David Gregory Sunday on Meet the Press, “We have countless elections now that Democrats have won because the Republicans have nominated extremists that their voters reject.”

The Beatles had their Magical Mystery Tour. The Republican trip is even more bizarre and they’ve done it without mind-altering substances. You need only look at the recent segment from Fox News segment, “trolling with Elizabeth Hasselbeck” pumping fear of Muslim voters, because every Muslim is suspect because obviously those tricky Muslims aren’t going to subvert American democracy publicly, like, say, the Republicans.

Wasserman Schultz pointed to 2008 and 2012 as examples. We may soon add to that 2014 and 2016 given the way things are shaping up. That’s not to say Democrats are going to have it easy. That’s far from the case when you factor in voter suppression laws and the floodgates of the 1 percent’s coffers flowing into GOP campaigns thanks to the Supreme Court, a subsidiary of the Koch brothers.

On the other hand, that money isn’t buying facts and it sure isn’t buying the truth. The GOP is as dishonest as it is extreme, as it proves day in and day out. Republican dishonesty was exposed by the mainstream media of all things in 2012, much to the GOP’s chagrin, and with their voice becoming more shrill and extreme every year, they can’t count on escaping notice in the upcoming election cycles, either.

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They’re already laying the ground work, of course, with Franklin Graham, Billy’s son, telling anyone who’ll listen that the news media is persecuting Christians, as if.

This is the result when you question religious zealots:

Goldwater Republicans, as opposed to ideological and religious extremists passing as Republicans today, have had their own voices drowned out and the establishment, which, having fostered and supported Tea Party dupes across the country, now finds itself trying to hold a tiger by the tail. This is much the same as what happened to German conservatives who tried to use Hitler’s extremism to advance their agenda. Nutjobbery, now as then, has taken on a life of its own.

Where it will end is anybody’s guess, but the true depths of Republican depravity, shocking as they are, have yet to be fully plumbed. That is as certain as death and taxes. Think about it: we have people coming out in support of a Jew-hating white supremacist even while Republican candidates like Rand Paul are trying to mainstream white supremacy, and also cheering on an act of armed rebellion by a 1 percenter complaining about having to obey the law just like everybody else. It’s difficult to imagine them sinking much lower, but you know they have it in them. You just know it.

Ugly is as ugly does, is the old saw, and it has never been proven more true than by the GOP since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, except for when he was elected again in 2012. We Heathens believe we are our deeds. Talk is cheap and also dishonest if you’re a Republican today, and Republicans cannot escape their deeds or their lies. They cannot, like Mitt Romney and Rand Paul and Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz and so many others, say one thing and do another and have it not be noticed.

They commit the most heinous acts of racism and then try to complain it is really liberals who are racist, or accuse liberals of anti-Semitism for opposing Israel’s domestic or foreign policy, while themselves lamenting in a typically Völkisch way that “Jews are the problem” or that Jews “are too busy polishing their diamonds to fix their cars.”

C’mon. Really? And liberals are the anti-Semites? Both parties have problems with racism? No, there are certainly racist liberals but conservatives have institutionalized racism. There is no comparison to be made. No Republicans complained, let alone expressed outrage, when Jerry Boykin and Pat Robertson made those egregious statements. Yet imagine how different their reaction would have been had those words come from the mouths of liberals, who, of course, would never have uttered them in the first place.

And then every time there is a negative outcome to one of their policy positions, as when somebody uses the guns the GOP insists everybody own and carry, killing and wounding people, sometimes themselves. They blame liberals for that, too, the same liberals who oppose the ownership and carrying rights that made those crimes possible.

We notice these things. Even the mainstream media eventually notices these things and even if they don’t they get excoriated as though they did. Yet the Republican Party, instead of toning it down, just becomes more extreme, and then tries to hide it with a smile or by banning reporters or networks, or hiding behind closed doors from the public – actions far from compatible with he idea of democracy.

But then, conservatism has never been terribly comfortable with the idea of democracy. They’d rather have somebody – themselves – ensconced in positions of permanent authority, telling everybody what to do and how to do it. Thank goodness America had Thomas Paine rather than Edmund Burke.

The status quo handily eliminates change, you know, and that other word they hate so much – evolution. It is a good thing the Enlightenment was a liberal, secular thing, because gods alone know where we’d have ended up with a conservative counter-revolution, though we’re beginning to find out now. All the signs point to the 13th century trajectory.

I don’t think any of us will enjoy the ride.


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