As the Republican Party licks its’ gaping wounds with the loss on Tuesday and tries to figure out whether the path of lies or hate or greed or fear was more to blame (or whether it was the fault of one of their most favorite partisan Governors who dared to help the people of his state when Hurricane Sandy hit instead of putting partisanship above We the People), there are a number of articles with the narrative of “Republicans wonder what went wrong” or “Republicans wonder what’s next”.
Or the best ones, “Republicans’ views have evolved” and “should the haters be booted from the Party or further embraced”.
The reality is, the Republican Party is a patchwork of extremism whose agendas don’t necessarily complement each other. The greed crowd, the hate and fear crowd and the bomb everyone crowd are really a marriage of convenience (ironically, a ménage a trois) and demographics are only going to make things worse over the next cycles. This election was the 5th popular vote loss in the last 6 elections as well.
Of course, this is a perfect opportunity to drive a progressive agenda as marriage equality was a big winner. So was the rejection of the “how much rape is ok” mentality and the more obvious of the greed agenda. Now is the time for progressive leaders – especially those in the Senate – to make this fake epiphany by the Republicans as well as the corporate appeasing agenda of the Blue Dog/DLC middle of the road Democrats become obsolete for a generation or more.
When Romney tacked to the middle, his favorability went up. When Obama or Biden tacked left, their favorability went up. While it is nice to see prominent Republicans acknowledge the train wreck that their Party has become, they can’t or won’t distance themselves from one of the three pillars of crap that has held their Party up for the past few decades because they simply can’t afford to lose any one of these buckets of voters.
Progressive issues are winners at the polls and even better, they help people. So while the Republican Party “does soul searching”, “evolves”, ‘has a revelation” or wonders why they have been consistent losers once their fear, hate and greed are exposed, progressives have an opportunity to kick them back into the 20th Century where they belong. They are the same group of Hannity’s, Limbaugh’s, Boehner’s, Ryan’s, Cantor’s, Rove’s and Romney’s as they were three days ago, when they were convinced that their loser policies were winners.