G.O.P – Catch 22 – R.I.P

Tactics flow from strategy. Strategy is a plan to translate vision into action. When dogmatic beliefs stifle vision the result is that strategy is flawed and tactics fail. G.O.P. dogma has led the Party of Lincoln onto the path of extinction with a tainted vision, flawed strategy, and incomprehensible tactics. The G.O.P. has designed and implemented a Catch 22, a dilemma from which it cannot escape unscathed.  

Pundits will argue forever about the 2012 Presidential Election results and how the Republicans lost and the Democrats won. That is what they get paid to do. I am not a pundit. I am a concerned observer of the political process. I care about government and the governed. OK, you can read that as self-interest. I care about me and mine, but I also care about others, personal freedom, and fairness (an elusive state at best).

The worst thing that can happen to our Country is that one political party becomes so dominant that it rules because power does corrupt, and people do suffer as a consequence when power corrupts. The simple fact is that both the Democratic and the Republican Parties have abused power in the past and could abuse it in the future. That is why I am concerned that the Grand Old Party, the Republicans, seem on the verge of extinction from self-inflicted wounds. 

The G.O.P. will drown in the soup it has cooked up. Its failure of vision amounts to blindness. It has embraced extremists on several fronts: taxes, unbridled capitalism, evangelical dogma, race baiting, and moral supremacy. It has built a collective of extremists. It has failed to recognize that the American demographic is changing and changing rapidly. It has not just boxed itself into a corner. It has boxed itself into a coffin.

The 2012 Presidential Election has made it clear that the G.O.P has failed to understand the emerging demographics of the Nation and the values of its minorities: people of color, women, Latinos, Asians, gays and lesbians, and progressive men. Those groups now make up the majority of the voting population in America, and they are growing. Barack Obama’s reelection was delivered by those groups. The G.O.P. counted on a majority that no longer exists. 

The Republican Party seems doomed. It has to change to survive, but since it has built itself on special interests it will lose substantial constituents no matter how it tries to change. If it does not change, it is seems doomed. If it does change, it is seems doomed. Either way, major constituencies leave it. Extremism never pays off in the long run.  Voter suppression leads to voter insurrection and to people who wait in line for hours and hours to vote against you. Branding almost half of all voters as irresponsible takers is not just unfair and false, it is stupid. What is it Forest Gump said his mama always told him? “Stupid is a stupid does.”  

I remember the Goldwater conservative movement that believed Government ought to stay out of people’s lives and not dictate personal morality. I remember Reagan Democrats who believed the best leader was a person of consistent convictions. I remember a President Reagan who agreed to raise taxes when it had to be done. I remember a President Bush who said: “No new taxes,” and who raised them when it had to be done even though it would cost him his second term because he did the right thing when it had to be done. I remember Republican Senator Richard Lugar who lost his primary bid because he believed in compromise. 

I remember Albert Einstein who said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over again and expecting different results.”   Those days are gone for the G.O.P. It’s a dinosaur. When a party enlists the aid of billionaires against the interests of the majority, it is insane.