Comments on "Why the G.O.P. must die"

This is fabulous. Thank you!

Why are you pointing to a link that requires a paid subscription? Also, "none TOO kind", please.

Organ Leroy--

Thanks for the correction.

And why link to an article that requires a paid subscription? It's awesome. That's why.

A long time ago, people were paid to write--particularly if their writing was interesting, carefully researched and insightful. Harper's Magazine is anachronistic in this sense--respecting the contributors by requesting readers pay. A year subscription can be had for about ten dollars.

Decades of Republican and conservative rule have left the country—and by extension much of the world—in abject disaster.

This is the kind of bitter, hallucinatory, negative thinking that makes the left lose elections. This is the best time in the history of the world to be alive. And things are probably going to get better and better, but all the left has to offer is hoping for a "crisis of realignment".

This "insightful" piece is one of the most boneheaded things I've ever read.

Good grief. Please, go with the fuzzy-wuzzy Obama "hope" and "change" stuff instead of this hysterical garbage.

jmr--

I've just returned from Detroit. I respectfully disagree on your "things are probably going to get better and better" statement.

"Decades of Republican and conservative rule"? Except that the Democrats didn't lose complete control of Congress until... 1994! If you think the Dems haven't been complicit in neoliberalism, or in warmaking, or anything else that has made this country an "abject disaster", then you're missing something.

As for McConnell's idea, which you highlighted in bold, that the Dems should just drop abortion rights (and presumably gay rights and other things that keep the Party from being "culturally conservative") in order to save the planet, that's crap too. The Dems don't represent working class voters- neither party does. And much of what passes for cultural conservatism isn't going to change that. Cultural conservatism in the US is predominantly bootstraps evangelism, not social gospel Christianity. It meshes far more closely with a theocracy than with a welfare state.

Oh, Jonathan- I'd totally do you if you dressed up in that man drag outfit again; Something about you being so liberal and yet owning that raw masculinity... It's so tragic that you're also so... straight.

Next time you feel like owning your machismo and knowing another liberal man, I'm game!

Thanks Jonathan, that's what I'm talking about.. BIG PICTURE.

To me, the most shocking thing about the GOP versus the Democrats is the gross fiscal irresponsibility of the former, set against the surprising restraint shown by the latter. This has been going on for thirty years now, so it's not a blip; it's the way they operate. Reagan was the most fiscally radical president we've ever had, and Bush II the most irresponsible, while Clinton is the only president we've had in decades who could control the budget. Now McCain's proposing -- that word "proposing" should be in quotation marks, because he's doing it so casually, even accidentally -- to DOUBLE the yearly federal deficit. There isn't a serious economist in the world who can support McCain's radical and out-of-control ideas. He would have us spending half our budget in debt servicing, and the minute China, who is buying most of this debt, gets nervous, which would be the day McCain got elected, we are all in serious, serious trouble.

To me, that's it. It's not the size of the deficit; it's the total lack of seriousness the Republicans have on the subject -- on all subjects, really. You've got the social conservatives who just cannot bring themselves to admit that the sky is blue, and I understand that, sort of; but I absolutely do not understand the casual recklessness of the Bush/Cheney regime. And that's exactly the part of Bush's policies that McCain is proposing to continue. His "well, I don't really know anything about this stuff, but I'm sure we'll be fine if we just slash taxes some more, and buy fewer paperclips" attitude is profoundly unserious and profoundly unhealthy. I'd say it's un-American as well, but history says I'm wrong; irresponsibility IS the American way. But we can't afford it anymore.

Oh. My. God.

There are people who believe you don't need a knife fighter if you have 55% (or for that matter, 100%)?

And there are people who think people like this are brilliant???

I've got a ba-a-ad feeling about this.

Let’s enumerate Jonathan’s rather adolescent and sweeping generalizations.

• Decades of imperial wars? -- Bush’s invasion of Iraq was the wrong call. Granted. Vietnam? Well, Ike/JFK/and LBJ wanted to spare SE Asia from communism. Clinton bombed the Serbs from slaughtering Muslims. Are these imperial, like the Spanish Conquistadors? If so, please explain.


• No energy policy? -- As I recall Bill Clinton was in office for eight years and didn’t do a damn thing. Neither did Bush 41 or Reagan. Bush 43 tried, but failed.


• Cultural decline? -- What, now you’re saying the trashy network sitcoms, skankily dressed high school girls, low riding jeans, and couch potato slobs are the Republicans fault?

Economic decline? -- Really? More Americans than ever own their own homes. More minorities than ever graduate from college. Despite periodic recessions and a huge deficit, the stock market and other investments continue upward. Even now with high gas prices, there hasn’t been one quarter of negative growth and the economy is remarkably resilient and adaptive and America is the most philanthropic country on the planet.

• Environmental decline? -- Nixon founded the E.P.A. Lake Erie is clean. Now, before you say ‘Global Warming’ is the fault of the G.O.P. may I remind you that SUVs (especially minivans) were much loved by dems.


• Social decline? -- Huh? Same-sex love scenes are practically ubiquitous in our media. Gay marriage is legal in two states. An African American is running for president!

So Jonathan, your punditry would be so much elevated is you think before you type.

Meanwhile, Canada has a budget surplus, has had gay marriage for a long time, has gays in the military serving openly, and is investing in real energy and transportation projects ...

Yeah, we're not doing that well.

What fnarf@9 said.

if the party were more welcoming to working-class voters who are pro-life or culturally conservative, such voters might be more inclined to vote their economic interests, which are almost certainly Democratic.

You mean like they used to before Johnson got all civil rights on them? Yeah...I suppose. I love the way "social conservative" is used as a euphemism for bigot these days. Jesse Helms was a social conservative from what I hear in the news media lately.

Krugman said some time ago, the working class has not turned away from the democratic party. Southern whites have turned away from the democratic party. But if you read Nixonland you see that wasn't just a southern white thing. The republicans were in tatters after Goldwater's defeat. Then came the Voting Rights Act and anti-discrimination law in housing and employment and a lot of white solidly democratic enclaves in places like Chicago suddenly started voting republicans into office. The only way they're coming back, that generation of them anyway, is if the party became something Jesse would have wanted to come back to.

The issues they yap about these days, like abortion and gay rights and national security and the war, are fungible. They're voting their tribe now, not the issues. That's how they can essentially vote to kick themselves in the teeth economically year after year. They're voting their tribe.