Yesterday the Republican Party released what they are calling an "autopsy" of the reasons why they failed to win the last election. Their major conclusion is that they were messaging their principles badly, which caused voters to misunderstand them. I have another autopsy finding, which I have been hearing on liberal media, of course. It is much more helpful, I think, than the idea that saying the same thing in a different way will change voters' minds in the next election.
My diagnosis is that the Republican Party committed suicide. Like all suicides, there are still some traces of the method that they used, and it is called their party platform. In this statement of Republican principles, there is everything they need to guarantee that their brand of politics is dead in the water.
Unconditional opposition to abortion: you cannot support this if you are a doctor, and have ever heard of an ectopic pregnancy. But you can support it if you are a doctor who has become a primitive Christian and feels a compulsive need to prove how loyal you are, because you are terrified of God.
Voter suppression: you can really get behind this if you are a white racist, such as the group of elderly, dying Republicans who govern the state of Arizona. These people feel no need to even accord common courtesy to our lawfully-elected, popular African-American President (see my illustration above). Outright, declared racists find a warm welcome in the Mississippi of the Southwest.
I suppose I could classify the whole culture of disrespect towards our President under Republican standard requirements; the minute one of them even makes a gesture towards him they are under fire from their most powerful leaders. But the whole issue can be reduced to one thing: on this tenth anniversary of the launch of a war of aggression on the part of the United States--to our everlasting shame as a nation--the Republican Party stands for privilege and stealing. They want to continue extending every possible privilege towards white, heterosexual Americans who prosper under their system, and shut out everyone else ruthlessly as they rush to redistribute America's wealth upward to themselves.
Meanwhile, they are using their tool, the media, to spread their message subtly and openly. There is a new word in media nowadays: journotainers. They are people who call themselves news reporters, but in reality act as distributors of Republican talking points. I don't wish to mention their names because I hate to give them publicity, but if you watch Fox "News" you know who they are.
Others among them are on the production end of the media, and recently they made a new dramatization of Holy Scripture called The Bible, which is being shown right now. It has many watchers, but what is lesser known is that the advisory panel for the production was made up entirely of Religious Right authorities. Shock and surprise when the actor chosen to portray the biblical Satan happens to have a strong physical resemblance to President Obama! Our bad! How could that have happened?
The production team hastened to get out a disclaimer lauding the actual career actor who doesn't have the smarts to realize that he resembles the President and be careful what he lets his agent get him into. I'm sure he is a nice man, but it hardly matters. The producer and his wife, Roma Downey (one of our leading primitive Christians) are wringing their hands like Dorothy who can't find her way home from Oz, complaining that such a nice man as their actor could be the subject of complaints that they cast an Obama lookalike to play Satan. How you talk, you liberals!
But it is simply the right-wing culture of disrespect scoring once more, as thousands of Americans watch The Bible and get the message. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be, since when Obama was elected the first time around there was a flurry of Antichrist propaganda accompanied by a sharp uptick in Rapture and Apocalypse talk. Now that the Rapture is still a coming attraction after four years, the culture of disrespect has fallen back and regrouped: Plan B, as we used to say when I played Dungeons & Dragons years ago.
But these incidentals are beside the point that, in its present condition of being dominated by crazy paranoid racists, the Republican Party is dead. It has committed suicide. What is also being said in the online media is that possibly the surviving relatives are trying to bury the right-wing crazies by setting them up and then abandoning them. We can see this happening, possibly, at the CPAC last week. Talking heads are wondering why the extreme branch of the party was invited to speak, and why very popular Republicans like Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey were not invited. Well, that may be the strategy.
I am sure that the Republicans will continue to "say things" in an effort to cast their hideous policies in a different, more flattering light. However, it won't work, particularly if you are a woman, a Latino, young or if you have gay friends. Retooling the Model A isn't going to turn it into a Lamborghini, or in other words, you can't make a silk purse out of an elephant's ear.
Invite the crazies, let them think they are riding high, leave them in the CPAC auditorium and then shut the door. I would be the last one to blame the actual Republican Party for doing this. It is either cut the crazies loose or surrender the body of the present party to the mortuary, and cry at the funeral.
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