Tagged "GOP" |

The jokes just write themselves.

QFT

Geoffrey Dunn says watch out she’s still plotting:

Pay close attention: Palin’s rhetoric between now and Tampa will continue to be critical of both Romney and Obama; it will continue to push for a contested primary; and it will continue to signal Palin’s willingness to accept the nomination of a brokered convention. Palin knows that Romney will never pack her star power with the base — and that neither Rick Santorum nor Newt Gingrich will either.

In the aftermath of Santorum’s sweep of Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, a brokered GOP convention is a very real possibility. The Republican Party has become a fractured mosaic of fringe constituencies — from Tea Partiers to evangelical anti-abortion activists, from libertarians who support Ron Paul to white supremacists who despise the fact that there is a black man in the White House. It is an unruly lot. The days of a GOP elite framing the presidential selection process are over. Charisma trumps experience; celebrity trumps substance; and, perhaps most disturbingly, anger trumps reason. Mama grizzlies, especially those who have been wounded, don’t go down easy.

Those who cannot distinguish between the birthers’ flim-flam and the critical questions that face our nation in 2012 will not win and do not deserve to.

National Review

So this election could prolong the Republican agony for another electoral cycle at least. It could lead to a general election candidate dubbed both rich and out of touch and only lip-syncing the theological truths that evangelicals hold dear. If he loses, it could well mean another spasm of even more Christianist extremism the next time round, since Christianists will argue that running another faux-culture-warrior was the reason they lost.

I say: nominate Santorum and get this over with. Then find a Romney in 2016 who actually is more moderate and doesn’t feel the need to apologize for it. But this won’t happen. The one outlier that might just happen? A brokered convention where a Palin-like figure emerges. Or a mess, where Romney feels obliged to lie even more, smear even more, and war-monger even more to force himself into a stronger position in the fall.

I fear a weak GOP candidate held afloat by a tsunami of smear ads against Obama, using the race card, the Israel card, the religion card, the Birther card, and what have you - thrown in by billionaires who hate the guy or who are obsessed with Greater Israel. It could be one of the ugliest smear campaigns Romney has ever run - and that’s saying something.

Andrew Sullivan

motherjones:

Context: Rick Santorum pledges to repeal 130,000 legally recognized same-sex marriages if elected president.

Using a salad fork for your entree, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff. I mean, and Rick Santorum says well, what he says was absurd, but an entertainer is allowed to be absurd. No. It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right in its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses in their own side. And it was depressing, because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.

George Will

Hey Republicans. Want to beat Obama?

Here’s your guy.

And the purge continues. What a shame.

Congrats right-wingers who called her a “RINO” and wanted her gone. You get your wish. Good luck getting “one of yours” elected.

When Democrats lost to Reagan, they nominated first Walter Mondale and then Michael Dukakis before finally tacking to the center and putting Bill Clinton in the White House. That was a 12-year stretch. Britain’s Labor Party spent a decade moving left before they finally tacked back to the center after losing to Margaret Thatcher. It took them 18 years to finally regain power. Republicans have only been in the wilderness for either four or six years, depending on how you count. If it takes until 2016 for them to come to their senses, that would be a pretty normal progression.

Kevin Drum