Even while the GOP Rome burns, some still choose to fiddle. Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh wasn’t satisfied with Arlen Specter leaving his party. He said that “people” have been emailing him asking Specter to take John McCain and his daughter Meaghan with him.
Here is the audio courtesy of Media Matters:
Rush said, “About 20 minutes ago, my email started going nuts with emails from the Judiciary Committee in the Senate Republican side that Arlen Specter was going to switch parties, become a Democrat, leaving the Republican Party. If he does that it gives the Democrats their 60 votes. It gives them a filibuster proof Senate, so it makes the Senate essentially as big a slam dunk for Obama and the Democrats as the House of Representatives. A lot of people say Specter take McCain with you, take McCain and his daughter.”
Rush’s spin on this was that Specter is leaving the GOP because he wasn’t treated like a hero for opposing the Employee Free Choice Act. I don’t understand why Republicans like Limbaugh think that it is funny that moderates are leaving their party. If I was a Republican, I would not be amused at all by a Senator leaving my party. Republicans just gave a Senate seat to the Democrats, but they couldn’t tolerate having a moderate view in their party.
Limbaugh was laughing at the suggestion that Specter should take the McCains with him. John McCain is a fairly conservative politician, but since he disagrees with the party on issues like immigration and torture, I guess he has to go. This is a terrible day for Republicans, and I have even worse news for them, I don’t think that they have hit bottom yet.
Right now, projections show more losses for them in the 2010 election, and if things keep going as they are, I doubt that they will have any chance against Obama in 2012, yet some Republicans see this as a day of celebration. As a PA Democrat I am happy that Specter switched, because for the politics of this state, he fits the Democratic mold.
People like Rush don’t consider moderates to be “real Republicans.” The bad news for the GOP is that aren’t enough, “real Republicans” for them to win election, so celebrate Specter’s departure, and rejoice at you continued election defeats.
Republicans will keep shrinking as a party because the people who they should embrace, the large number of fiscal-conservatives, they turn away in favor of religious loonies. I’ve never quite understood what Christ, military-grade weapons, big business, and crushing social programs meant to help the poor, elderly, and disabled have in common. I’m not a Christian, but it would seem to me like Christ would be anti-abortion, but also pro-entitlement, anti-gun, and anti-big business. When I was a kid, I had to listen to the whole “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” story over and over, so I’d imagine that Christ would be against these things like opposing gay marriage and building more prisons. But, what do I know?
[Reply]
Since the Republican News Network (aka Faux News .. er, FOX News) has been defending torture, hate crimes, Republican ripoffs, Wall Street crooks and everything indecent in society (greed, hatred, cruelty, criminal behavior, jingoism, etc.) – it’s no wonder that Rush thinks he’s got an audience.
I’m just reminded of the old Blazing Saddles line:
“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know, morons.”
The fact is that the Republican “party” of today is an ultra-radical religious group of zealots that have forgotten the real meaning of what they are, and have begun the march to extremism. Let them keep marching, it only underscores the misguided nature of their pundit-based beliefs, and the ease with which they will turn on each other like a pack of rabid wolves.
There has to be a moderate group of people who can put a party together that transcends that extremism, or there will be no more GOP – it will all be the PFURP instead (Pretty F****d Up Radical Party). The fact that no moderate Republicans are willing to bitchslap these morons means that they aren’t willing to stand up and wrest control from the looney bin wingnuts in control.
I watch those shows for the sheer entertainment of laughing at how truly stupid they are, and how mindless the dittoheads must be who can believe what they spew is truth. Seriously, who would let this lard-ass tell them what to do but a bunch of gutless wonders? Reagan would have bitch-slapped the crap outta Rush for being an idiot bent on dividing the country. No one in the Republican party has dared to stand up to him so far; and until they do and settle his crap – they are going to be bent on the same losing streak and getting smaller all the time.
Listening to him is like listening to an elongated perpetual fart. It’s constantly annoying and is full of gas and you know it’s gonna leave an odorous reminder of his true nature that no one wants to share.
When will there ever be a moderate Republican wing? The first day someone stands up and says enough is enough. Until then – I expect the same lunacy to be in the driver’s seat. It’s whiney, smelly and it just alienates people.
[Reply]
Moderates are the source of compromise in our political process. Democrats are already grumbling about the moderates in their majority, but the Democratic Party has a different culture than the GOP. Dissent is expected. The only thing Democrats love more than arguing with Republicans is bickering with each other. The GOP is in a very bad place right now,and if the day comes when Democrats start kicking their moderates out, this country will be in big trouble.
[Reply]