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February 07, 2013 08:16 AM UTC

Republican Party Purge Underway--But Not In Colorado, Folks

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Politico reports today:

Republicans and Fox News are moving to purge the controversial political creatures they created.

Both were damaged badly in 2012 by loud, partisan voices that stoked the base — but that scared the hell out of many voters. Now, the GOP, with its dismal image, and Fox News, with its depressed ratings in January, are scrambling to dim those voices. To wit:

Fox ousted contributors Sarah Palin and Dick Morris, two of the most obnoxiously partisan figures on the network’s air.

Karl Rove, himself sidelined by Fox after the election, has helped start a new super PAC, the Conservative Victory Fund, designed to keep controversial conservatives like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) from winning Senate primaries.

Senate GOP leaders created what amounts to a buddy system with their caucus’s most popular tea party members, Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, to get their help in taming anti-establishment conservatives.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been running around the country warning anyone who will listen that Republicans must quit being the “stupid party” that nominates nutty candidates.

This is reportedly more aftereffects of the Republican Party's many defeats in 2012, and further acknowledgement of something we've been warning Republicans in this state for many years: the extremists in the Republican party have become the face of the party, and as a result the GOP has entered a phase of what could be terminal decline as they continue to alienate the broad American center. Candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock in 2012, who lost otherwise entirely winnable U.S. Senate races after exposing themselves as horrifying throwbacks on the issues of rape and abortion, are symptoms of the same problem that resulted in the nomination of Weld County DA Ken Buck in 2010–who went on to narrowly lose his Senate race after being exposed as a throwback.

The bottom line is, even the most obstinate conservative ideologue should realize by this time that more than window dressing is needed to prevent an increasingly out-of-touch and radicalized GOP from becoming a permanent minority. Obviously, getting rid of wholesale embarrassments like Dick Morris and Sarah Palin is a place to start. But that's not enough–and even advocates of "change" in the GOP like Gov. Bobby Jindal disappointingly say that the party needs change, "not in principles, but in the way we talk and act."

We don't think the principles behind Akin's, Mourdock's, and Buck's self-inflicted defeats were miscommunicated. In fact, many Tea Party folks know exactly what they want from their candidates. Any attempt by the establishment GOP will be met with, well, anger. Or as conservative pundit Michelle Malkin says, "This is war."

Here in Colorado, the situation is even bleaker for those who hope to see Republicans modernize and regain competitiveness. After the fifth consecutive general election defeat in Colorado since 2004, a defeat brought on directly by GOP intransigence and treachery on the popular issue of civil unions, what are they doing this year, folks? What is making the headlines for Colorado Republicans? Creationism in schools. Total abortion bans. Even less GOP support for civil unions than existed last year. In response to yet another defeat at the polls, despite all the calls for moderation from Josh Penry and Rob Witwer, the Colorado GOP has lurched right yet again.

And if that makes you wonder how they can possibly fare any better in 2014, well, so do we.

Comments

18 thoughts on “Republican Party Purge Underway–But Not In Colorado, Folks

  1. The principles, as you say, are the problem.  Akin and Mourdock and Buck simply express those that make up the basis of the national GOP platform and GOP legislation in GOP in state legislatures across the country.

    As long as GOP legislators focus on schemes to suppress minority voters, restrict women's rights and LGBT rights and gerrymander their way out of having to listen to the majority of American voters as opposed to their donor base, their new message that they are really all about smaller but effective government, opportunity  and prosperity for  ordinary Americans won't be believed.  Actions speak louder and their legislative actions show that their priorities are exactly what the stupid offenders say they are.  

    1. Absolutely. Frankly, I'm amazed at how their ass-kicking has made them become even more extreme, the only exception being the main party's willingness to actually accept undocumented immigrants as Americans. Obviously for pragmatic purposes – they still believe that "Hispanics are Republicans, they just don't know it," to paraphrase their foolish, Alzheimer's-addled former leader, so they're hoping to lull them back into voting for GOrP candidates. Too bad that old white guys never remember how they screw over anyone else, because the screwed-over never forget.

      Immigration reform aside, they're trying to redefine rape, reestablish women as property, demonize the poor, destroy the environment and prevent sensible energy development, privatize everything for their own selfish and short-term gain, and make our society as unsafe as it can be. They're still anarchists in the ACTUAL sense of the word – they want no government, except as one that makes it possible for them to lawfully steal as much money as they can from working Americans. I fully expect them to start wearing uniforms and holding massive rallies any day now.

    2. Great post Bluecat.

      As gooberized as these state redleg legislators are, as anti-women, anti-evolution, anti-voter rights, anti-choice, anti women's health care, anti-sexuality, anti-green, anti-sex education, anti-rights of children to go to school without getting shot with an assault rifle by angry white christ-ee conservative radio listening loons, anti-small business, anti-social safety net and anti-whatever I left out, I can't help but believe that in there with all that idiocy is a seeming refusal to play the national pinko game. It's as though Cadman, Mcnulty, Brophy, and the whole slimy red contingent here is screaming "This is who we are, and this is what we "believe".

      This is a crew that's unabashedly playing to the base, they're "dancin' with the one that brung 'em".  They're definately playin' the Deliverance banjo tune.

      Rove, Ryan, Jindal, and a host of red elites are trying to re-package an old and disproven "I got mine, you go to hell" ideology. The old lipstick on a pig grift. Holy cow, Cantor caused neck injuries with his head turner Tuesday. Those lizzards are hypocrites.

      But these reds here…………..seemingly no camoflage with their agenda. Save for lying about why they ran the slavery con yesterday and several other easily recognized and slightly veiled head fakes, they're loud and proud with that paid for agenda.

    3. Oh, and by the way.  How did those economic policies work out for you?

       

      The "REpublican" Party is totally intellectually and morally bankrupt and needs to be given a swift and certain death penalty and these nut cases need to be sent back to the margins of society where they came from.

  2. BlueCat, Aristotle, Roccoprahn – all absolutely correct.  I think progressives are often confused by what the Republican/conservative/rightwing movement really is.  As pointed out above, they are not for small government, they are anti-government. Though they probably support national defense, they would privatize all of it if they could. They're about squeezing profit from every possible endeavor. They're about keeping women in a very restricted place. They're about demonizing minorities, gays, "illegals," and anyone else who doesn't fit into their narrow definition of a god-fearing rightwinger.

    What progressives need to remember is there are the actual GOALS of the rightwingers vs. the rightwing MESSAGE/PROPAGANDA. Many of the rightwingers know they cannot win elections and power by stating their actual goals so they have to broadcast a message that is not as extreme in order to have a chance to attract a majority of voters. The Sarah Palins and Dick Morrises are no more than propaganda failures – it's not that their stated views don't represent the true goals and opinions of the rightwingers, they just carried it too far in their messaging, turning off the sane.

    1. I disagree with your ultimate conculsion.  I think this "Republican" Party is only interested in using its political power to enforce its will and its beliefs on the rest of America, no matter how unpopular that might be.  They have finally reached the place where they can't keep the lid on what they truly believe and want and America is noticing that it's not just a few crackpots anymore.  It's the whole party.

  3. The question will be: who wins this tug-of-war? Steve King far outpolls any potential Republican contender to the soon-to-be-open Iowa Senate seat. Similarly, it's not as though the establishment ignored the threat of the Akins and the Mourdochs that resulted from their whole-hearted assimilation of the Tea Party meme – the GOP establishment did try to support more mainstream candidates in 2012, but were outgunned by the activists in their party on the ground at primary/caucus time.

    The radio personalities aren't moderating, and it remains to be seen if the replacement programming on FOX is any less whacky than the worn-out figures of Dick Morris and Sarah Palin, or if they're just looking for fresh faces…

    1. Right now, I'm not so concerned about who wins, because either way it weakens their party and makes it more likely that Democrats (and, hopefully, progressives) win elections and set policies. And as batshit crazy as some of these 'pubs are revealing themselves to be, Democratic victories must continue for America's sake.

    2. Really, we have to admit that Claire McCaskill pulled a brilliant political move by supporting Akin in the primary.  The main beneficiary of all this stuff is the Democratic Party and if they help the Akin's of the "Republican" Party along, well, all's fair in love and war, and politics is war.

      1. Absolutely.

        We're at the point…….Actually I think we were at it a while ago……..where we no longer need to try to understand why these "people" are who or what they are.

        As with former enemies of this Democratic Republic, the Nazis, Imperial Japan, Communist Russia, Fascism, al Qaeda, we only need know how to beat the republican in its' present form..

        In this case, the methods are much preferable. As is the solution. Simply never, ever, at any time, for any reason, under any circumstance, elect the redleg to any office.

        Faux conservatism, extreme right wing republicanism, phony "libertariansim" , Ayn Rand/Rubio/Ryan/Paul style, all will fall by the wayside, into the outhouse pit they belong, when and only when the most powerfull force in a Democracy, the voter, sends them there.

        Unconditional surrender by the redleg  menace.

        The only thing we need to know about republicans is how to beat them.

      2. Rs have done it to us supporting candidates like Nader.

        I view supporting the R crazoids in primaries in this way as a way of bringing the zit to a head ripe for popping sooner rather than later after more festering.. As everyone here says, these people represent the real beliefs and goals of the GOSP.   Getting them out in the open and running in general elections where they can be defeated by Dems hastens the return of our nation to grown up sanity.

  4. I don't get why the govs think Josh Penry is some sort of voice for moderation. Don't you ever read his propaganda columns in his hometown paper? The column he and Witwer ran in the Post is no resemblance to Penry's claptrap to the true believers of Mesa County.

     

  5. The primary goal of the Republican Party is protecting the super-wealthy. They stoke up the conservative base with racists, religious extremists, anti-science zealots, gun nuts, and Libertarians. They're about to lose older folks by cutting social security.

    Do they have any other options to build a coalition?

    Just a point: Palin & Morris were fired because they were stupid, not because they were conservative. Fox News still has plenty of extreme right wingers; in fact I don't think they have any commentators who aren't conservative?

     

  6. I have had the occasion to listen to some late night, neo-con, talk radio of late…I noticed two things so far.

    I was surprised at the level of hero worship that is laid upon these rightie blabbermouths. I was also struck with the extreme level of toxic and bellicose rhetoric coming from idiots like Hannity and the people who call into his show and others.

    As far as they are concerned , my friends, they are already preparing for war. Late night talk show hosts and their "experts" are systematically pushing a bunch of easily duped people into violence in order to protect their precious  "free market" (fuck you, Milton). This is seriously scary from my vantage point.

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