If I were the chairman of the Republican National Committee, I would assume that I had an open invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of the rightest of the right held in Washington every year about this time. I would express my deepest concern over what this conference is doing to my party, and express it in as blunt of terms as possible, all the better to make the attendees understand what I was about to say. It would go something like this:
Fellow conservatives, each year, you descend upon Washington, D.C., and each year you invite the most divisive, shrill, ridiculous, and downright dangerous people to speak. If I remember correctly, Ann Coulter was here last year, and you all gave her a standing ovation after she said, "(the usual Ann-speak that gets people riled up)" This year, you are giving an award to a man who has said he hopes President Obama fails before a live radio audience of millions.
Fails? Do you all wish to see President Obama's administration fail? Seriously? I assume some of you are not elected officials from red states; will you still feel this way when you are all selling pencils on street corners, that President Obama should fail to save the country just to somehow vindicate your most ridiculous and dangerous ideas? I propose to you something that no one else has the courage to say out loud - that you people are destroying the Republican Party.
Every year, you come here and compete with each other to see who can make the most ridiculous statement, float the most outlandish trial balloon, and yes, tell the biggest whopper of a lie, hoping that people will somehow start to believe it if they hear it often enough. That might have flown back in 1994 when Bill Clinton's administration really was floundering, or in 2002 when the nation was still reeling from the attacks of September 11th, 2001, but I have news for you all. People are on to you. They're not buying it anymore. Poverty, especially when inflicted upon those who are not used to it, has a tendency to focus one's attention and sharpen their bullshit-detecting skills to a fine edge.
In short, you are not helping. In fact, the further you push the GOP to the right, the more people you alienate. We are already on the verge of becoming a regional party; we lost the Pacific west a generation ago. What influence we had in the Northeast is nearly gone now. We have lost most of the Rocky Mountain region. We have even lost Indiana, for God's sake. Indiana! Indiana voted for Bush by lopsided margins - twice. You are killing us!
So I ask you, please leave Washington, and never come back. The Republican Party can survive without its know-nothing wing. The know-nothings who have taken over the party over the past two decades are scaring off anyone with half a brain in his or her head. They're becoming independents, or worse, Democrats.
Those of you who happen to be elected officials are definitely not enhancing the reputations of your home states by being here, so why are you here, exactly? Is Alabama really so backward that they think Rush Limbaugh has actually had a point since, oh, 1997 or so? Do a majority of South Carolinians really believe the nation would be better off under the leadership of Sarah Palin? Is there really a groundswell in the Bluegrass State for Joe The Plumber (TM)? How the hell did Joe The Plumber (TM) come to represent the Republican Party in the first place? The man is a joke, and that you people do not realize that makes me want to switch parties, and I am the goddamned RNC chairman!
So please, for the love of God, get the hell out of here and quit stinking up the place while there is still a Republican Party to defend. Just go. And don't let the door hit you on your asses on your way out. Thank you.
Of course, I am not the chairman of the RNC, and I doubt the actual chairman of the RNC would have the stones to deliver remarks like this to a bunch of right-wing crazies exactly one rung higher on Darwin's Ladder than the Ku Klux Klan. So instead of expressing concern that will either fall upon deaf ears or provoke hostility, I'll rejoin you all in the cheap seats, order another beer and some nachos, and watch the implosion of the Republican Party in progress.