Robert J. Elisberg is a contributor to the LA Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, and C.NET. This post was found on Huffington and it places blame for the meltdown of the GOP where it clearly belongs
It should come as no surprise to Republicans that they are facing a far-right religious wing that's destroying their party. A wing so disruptive that it's discussing running a third-party candidate. And now at the problematically-named "Values Voters Summit," the G.O.P. is helping rip apart its own party.
As news reports note, not a single Republican presidential candidates is meeting with approval. The leader, Rudy Giuliani, is seen as a step from being cousin to Beelzebub. Forget 9/11, radical-right Republicans see Giuliani as 666. The second leading candidate, Mitt Romney, is as bad -- part of a "cult," as the leader of the influential First Baptist Church, Robert Jeffress, harshly dismissed Mormons.
More and link on the flip side
Who is to blame for appealing to intolerant bigots? Who is to blame for shooting their own moderates and insisting that all of America bow down to their policies? Elisberg seems to think the GOP is to blame.
The Republican Party won some presidential elections in the short run at the expense of selling off its future. By pandering to the radical-religious far right, the G.O.P. not only ignored the Constitution, but its party, as well, drumming out most moderate Republican officials. Those running in the party must now court the far-right out of fear, because no other base remains. Once the conservative icon of the party, Barry Goldwater would be a pariah today. After all, he said about gays, "To be in the military, you don't have to be straight, you just have to be able to shoot straight." You didn't hear that value at the Values Voter Summit...
But because the Republican Party blindly chose to follow this base, it is crumbling today. They have no one to blame but themselves.
And what happens when one of their megachurch leaders turns out to be a secret meth addicted gay man? If it wasn’t enough that one leader threatens leaders of foreign nations...or of it wasn’t enough that Teltubbies seem gay to someone...
No one wants Christianity legislated in America except about half of Bush’s supporters. No one wants to live under the American Taliban. This is where the Christian Wrong lost America.
Religion has its important place in the heart. In the home. In the church. It's religion, not politics. Politics is about protecting by law the Good of All People, whatever their beliefs, whoever they are. And in the end, the vast majority of Americans understand that that is what America is about.
The Republican Party wanted to win a few elections in the worst way, and they did. At the expense of its future, and the expense of America. If only they read and understood the Bible, rather than just thumped it. "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?" Matthew 16:26. They played with fire and brimstone, got a little spark, but now are getting incinerated. It's a crumbling hellhole they dug for themselves.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...