- During the election, when the notion that a reelected President Obama would be greeted by a chastened opposition, I wrote that I didn’t believe it, that we would be as politically divided as ever. That’s proven to be true.
- Jeb Bush can insist that the problem with the GOP is one of messaging, but he’s wrong. In his CPAC address, he said: “Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker.” And people believe that because they’ve been paying attention. That is now the orthodoxy of the Republicans and in a world with a decentralized media, there’s no way to cover it up. Bush himself may not be any of these horrible things, but he’s now a clear minority in his own party.
- The battle between the establishment wing of the party (Rove, Gingrich, etc.) and the protest wing (Paul, Cruz, etc.) presents two competing sides with no chance of victory. If Rove and Gingrich think Republicans need more mainstream candidates and ideas, they’re right, but they’re the wrong ones to be leading the charge. They’ve spent decades helping to mix the party’s poisonous cocktail of race-baiting and divisiveness and now they’re choking on that drink. The extremists they’ve always found useful as foot soldiers in their cynical campaigns for power are now the generals. Meanwhile, the Tea Party is unelectable and incoherent. Bile isn’t a platform.
- This version of the GOP will have no moment when clarity appears, no waterloo when it corrects course–it’s in a death spiral. What emerges–and when it emerges–is anyone’s guess.•
Tags: Jeb Bush, Karl Rove
