On the GOP's circular firing squad...

The national Republican party is in internal upheaval over how to best address the fact that they've gotten their asses handed to them two elections in a row. Even though the presidential election, in terms of the popular vote, was fairly close, there's no discounting the largest Democratic electoral margin of victory in 40 years.

It was a world-class ass-whupping, that came only two years after another rarely-seen drubbing the GOP took in the '06 mid-term elections.

Right-wing hawks in the party are saying that McCain's problem was that he wasn't conservative ENOUGH; that he tried to pander to potential Obama voters and alienated his base.

(before I get too deep in, I realize this doesn't involve obscure music; fuck off, it's my blog)



"When people wake up from their Bush hangovers, six months from now," said former GOP national chair Richard Bond, "it is my belief that they are not going to be buying into some of the things that Obama will potentially be doing. You have a real potential for these guys making a fundamental misjudgment of this election. They just didn't want George Bush anymore."



And while, to some extent, I do think that 'Bush fatigue' played a role in Obama's election, it's pretty hard for me to NOT recall the wise words of Bill Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid."



Ultraconservative Republicans want to keep trying to hammer away at voters on social issues like gay marriage and abortion… issues that really split people into emotional factions… but what they don't seem to realize is that, when the economy is going down the shitter, people can't afford to vote on dumb-ass social issues that don't concretely affect them (no matter how you feel about abortion or gays getting married, you can't possibly feel that it's more important than the economic situation).



In 2000 and 2004, when we were just running big deficits and not teetering on the edge of a financial cliff, people could afford to vote on that kind of stupid shit. But all it is, is a strategy; for all of the noise conservatives spew about abortion and homosexuality, the ACTUAL percentage of people directly affected by both of those issues is microscopic in comparison with those affected by real, actual ISSUES facing the United States.



Or, more simply put, it's a lot easier to base your vote on social issues when we're kicking ass in Iraq and running the average couple-trillion-dollar deficit; it's a lot harder when, five years on, we're STILL in that motherfucker, watching money that could be put to MUCH better use in the U.S. economy getting buried in the sand of the Middle East.



For me personally, I hope the presidential election results are a signal that U.S. citizens want to turn the government's focus to things that affect EVERYONE: the economy, our foreign policy, the containment/eradication of terrorism, health care and education. 



I think the ultimate test of this will be Sarah Palin's inevitable 2012 run at the presidency. While she did call the McCain-campaign shit-talkers who said she didn't know Africa was a continent "jerks," she DIDN'T say it wasn't TRUE. To me, she is representative of exactly the type of empty presidential suit that the GOP saw in George Bush… an easily-controlled commander-in-chief whose knowledge gaps can be plugged with by-the-book ultraconservative philosophy.

Hopefully, she'll lose by an even bigger margin than McCain.



Or – and this is my hope – GOP heads could perhaps realize that partisan bullshit doesn't help ANYONE, and perhaps a slight tilt in the conservative direction from Democrats and a little push in the progressive direction for Republicans might just be what this country needs: GOVERNMENT WORKING TOGETHER.

What a novel concept.

On a related note, how about Fox's Shepard Smith going after Nick DiPaolo when he accuses the media of 'being in the tank for Obama':

Nick DiPaolo vs Shepard Smith on Fox Strategy Room