White Flight Of Fancy

It isn't just Sarah Palin. The Republican base continues to follow the directions of and personally lionize a collection of leaders that most of America will never take seriously. Michelle Bachman, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry are all members of this group. There have always been people like this out there, on both sides of the political fence but I don't remember when they were so at the forefront of a major party, even one as far out of power as the Republicans are now.

Though the Republican spinners would portray it otherwise, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are straddling the middle of the road and even making deep concessions to conservatives on issues as diverse as health care and the Middle Eastern wars. Republicans are too blind to see but their opponents are spending a lot of time cultivating the middle.

I have said before that I think the Democrats are riding a demographic wave that should see them in the majority for a couple decades to come, unless a new party, even more progressive and hopefully less corrupt, rises to oppose them but demographics change slowly. The tables haven't turned so much that the Republicans can't take back control of Congress and the Presidency if they play it smart.

I don't think that pandering to the farthest reaches of the social conservative Right is playing it smart. The more they talk about conspiracy theories as if they are not only true but being played out by the party currently in power, the more securely they seal their doom. It's as if a death panel has judged them, found them undeserving and decreed a potassium bolus.

Republicans respond that what they are doing is no different than what the Democrats did during the Presidency of George W Bush. Do you think that's true? I don't.

I think the Republicans are guaranteeing democratic control of the federal government for years to come.