via The GOP has a Palin Problem, cross-posted from Care2.com ~ Originally published, 10 January 2010

The National Journal conducted a poll of 109 Republican Party leaders, asking them to “rank 5 candidates in the order of likeliness to capture the GOP nod.”  That former MA Governor Mitt Romney topped the lists of those polled with 81 points, 62 per-cent of which were first place votes, is unsurprising.  Were it not for half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s poor showing (25 points) it probably wouldn’t be worth talking about.

Not one of the party leaders or pundits polled selected Palin to top their list.  Taking into account the ideological nature of her supporters — distrustful of government, adherents to the myth of a liberal media, and, most importantly, a profound disdain for the GOP elite — this was the best outcome Palin could have hoped for.

Talented FiveThirtyEight.com political prognosticator, Nate Silver, likes Palin’s chances to win 2012 Republican presidential nomination.  Silver posted “10 reasons that Palin Could Win,” last Nov. 18.  In his Jan. 7 reaction to the Insider’s Poll, Silver reiterated his number eight reason from last year:

…If the Establishment, owing to electability concerns or whatever else, tries to put hurdles in her way by re-structuring the primary or delegate allocation process, it may only play into the victimization complex of Palin and her supporters.

Silver’s commentary is apt, and though the poll doesn’t represent any direct effort to “neuter” Palin’s potential candidacy, that doesn’t mean they wont (see video, below).  “Although the Establishment’s concerns about Palin’s viability as a general election candidate are well grounded,” Silver notes, “mostly they’re just terrified of her because she doesn’t need them. “

It might be wiser for establishment Republicans to remain hands-off, and wait for Palin to self destruct.  Her supporters have proven themselves willing to keep their blinders on, content to cling to the dazzling façade rolled out at the 2008 Republican National Convention.  However, Palin’s high visibility — albeit, NEVER in a critical forum — increases the probability of a politically fatal mistake.

Indeed, she may have already made it.  I’m not referring to Palin’s recent doubling down on her “death panel” analysis of health care reform efforts in Washington – a turn of phrase awarded “Lie of the Year” for 2009 byPolitifact.com, Pulitzer winner in that same year.  Palin’s deceit in this matter will go unnoticed by her supporters.

However, Palin’s snubbing of the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has got much attention.  Much more interesting is her commitment to speak at the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Feb. 4-6.

Muriel Kane posted an excellent summary about how different factions are reacting to Palin’s curious positioning at RawStory.com, Jan. 8.

Missed opportunity, simple greed, or shrewd calculation? Only time will tell the real meaning of Sarah Palin’s Tea Party gambit.

Another aspect that has, thus far, received little attention from the media pertains to whom Palin will share the stage with at the Tea Party Convention.  Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, Eric Boehlert, posed the question in a Jan. 9 post:  “Will the press question the ‘Palin – Farah’ ticket?”

The Beltway press still refuses to raise questions about Palin’s decision to attend the first annual Tea Party convention in Nashville next month and share the stage with a fringe radical like Joseph Farah, who is an avowed gay and Muslim-hating extremist, and whose wingnut publication, [World Net Daily], remains obsessed with the loony, and thoroughly debunked, conspiracy claim that Obama was not born in America.

Of course, Kane was correct – only time will tell how this will play out.  There is a long way to go, but the potential for Palin to become the 2012 GOP nominee still exists.  So, too, does another outcome which I suggested the day Palin announced her resignation as Governor of Alaska:

If Palin does still have national aspirations, her only hope of success (in her mind, mind you) would be to position herself at the head of some third-party, the radical right-wing of the GOP finally throwing off its remaining moderate faction.

See Also:

• David Weigel, “Is Palin Getting $100,000 to Speak at the Tea Party National Convention.“ WashintonIndependent.com, 7 January 2010.

• Here’s a teaser for the Jan. 10 ‘60 Minutes‘ segment on Sarah Palin:

Palin Inaccurate says McCain Strategist

Related on Care2:

• Palin Quits – Could GOP split be in the offing?

• The Death Panel Lie – Conservative Dishonesty in the Health Care Reform Debate

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Today, she’d know them as RINOs

“They love to engage in revisionist history,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said on the floor of the U.S. Congress, Nov. 19.  She was referring to Democrats as she had risen to speak in opposition to an environmental protection measure intended to safeguard a 21-mile segment of Molalla River in Oregon.  As she spoke, Foxx set about some blatant revisionism of her own.

Foxx’s began her objection with the bizarre suggestion that the GOP had been the champion of “good” environmental protection laws.  Had she stopped there, her floor speech would have justifiably been dismissed as a bit of irony.  Instead, Foxx went on to perpetuate the misconception that Republicans were also the champions of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, amid fervent obstruction from Democrats.

Upon the completion of Foxx’s remarks, she was passionately rebuked by Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA).  “I can’t believe my ears,” Cardoza said, and went on to assign credit for the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) to the efforts to the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Here is video of the exchange on the House floor from the ThinkProgress.org Nov. 19 post on the subject. (continued below the clip)

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While Cardoza’s assessment was factually correct and his tone appropriate, his rebuke of Foxx would have been strengthened by informing her that the Republican Party of which she spoke no longer exists.  Indeed, the Republicans whose votes were vital to passing civil rights legislation in the 1960s would be derided as RINOs – Republicans in Name Only – by Foxx and like minded, right-wing ideologues of today’s GOP.

That conservatives have sought to maintain this myth is nothing new.  Paul von Hipple addressed it in a 2005 Alternet.org post responding to a taxpayer funded “Republican Freedom Calendar” which presented a one-sided representation of their Party’s historic role as advocates of civil rights.  The evidence employed to prop up this argument relies upon the higher proportion of GOP votes for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It’s a far too narrow interpretation of history, as von Hipple indicated in his 2005 post:

In fact, Congressional votes on the Civil Rights Act did not break along party lines – they split along regional lines. In the North, both parties supported the Civil Rights Act; in the South, both parties opposed it. The difference was that the Republican Party had very little presence in the South, which had been dominated since the 1870s by the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party.

This period marks a historical turning point for both political parties.  President Johnson and liberal Northern Democrats were ill prepared for the Southern white backlash that followed the passage of civil rights legislation.  Of course, the legislation wasn’t the only factor, but it was during this time that the Democratic Party set on a path to shedding its racist elements.  In doing so, Democrats lost the political grip on the South it had held since the Great Depression.

The path chosen by the Republicans was altogether different.  Interestingly, the GOP underwent a schism, not unlike the one presently in progress.

Republican conservatives, sympathetic to the racist backlash among Southern whites, made their first political inroads in the South around this time.  The most significant evidence for this trend was the GOP’s 1964 presidential nomination of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.

Before Goldwater’s nomination, the GOP’s regional strength was based in the American North-East.  Their party leaders were inclined to support government investment in infrastructure.  Having been decimated during their initial struggle against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal (which they decried as “socialist,” sound familiar?) a moderate GOP persisted as a minority party, seeking to improve FDR’s legislation rather than rail against it.

Goldwater lost to LBJ in 1964, but having won his home state and four other Southern states in the contest, the GOP’s course was set.  They abandoned their moderate positions — the mantle of which Foxx is presently attempting to claim — in pursuit of the racially divisive “Southern Strategy.”

This political strategy was neatly summarized by Sidney Blumenthal in a 2003 Salon.com post:

With the coming of the civil rights revolution, Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson deployed the federal government to support social equality. In reaction, Republicans — from Barry Goldwater to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan — developed a Southern strategy to win over white voters in the region who felt betrayed. That strategy involved using widely understood code words going back to the Civil War like “states’ rights,” an updating of the well-worn strategy of Southern reactionaries to demagogue on race in order to keep poor and working-class whites divided from blacks on issues of common interest. Thus the party of Lincoln became the party of Reagan.

Indeed, Reagan’s ascendency is instructive.  His rise was facilitated by the GOP’s rejection of its moderate voices.  Just as Foxx mistakenly claimed the civil rights mantle on Nov. 19, Reagan did also.   Yet his true feelings were betrayed by his policies and rhetoric.

From the above mentioned von Hibble Alternet post:

…Ronald Reagan, in his 1966 campaign to become governor of California, endorsed repeal of California’s Fair Housing Act, saying, “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so.”

Similarly, Foxx’s own statements over the past year illustrate her departure from the moderate positions of the kinder, gentler GOP of yore.  She has more than made herself clear regarding the present-day civil rights issues, most notably in debates over the rights of homosexuals and health care reform.

My Care2 colleague Tracy Viselli understandably called for Foxx’s apology or resignation following her slanderous comments about Matthew Sheppard on the House floor while debating the hate crime legislation that bares his name.  More recently, Viselli , rightly, took issue with Foxx’s declaration that the present health care reform proposals pose a bigger threat to America than “any terrorist from any country.”  Add to this Foxx’s 2006 vote, along with 33 other Republicans, opposing the extension of the Voters Rights Act, and it becomes clear that any claim of civil rights advocacy exists only in her mind.

Further, these outrageous examples of Foxx’s true beliefs plainly illustrate that the North Carolina congresswoman has absolutely nothing in common with the Republicans who helped advance  the cause of civil rights in the 1960s.  Rather, Foxx is just another product of the cynical GOP which prospered by exploiting the societal divisions left after their passing.

Weber Writes Obituary for the Republican Party

Posted 11 April 2009 @ The Huffington Post:

…The Republican Party is like a dying tyrant, mad with syphilis, ironically like that very Stalin they would accuse their enemies of associating with. How else to account for their desperation to resurrect the wraith of Joseph McCarthy; the hammy and baffling utterances from high level party officials like Boehner and McConnell; the blatant desire on their part to let the country fail out of sheer resentment; the wanton sedition of Conservative shit-stirrers ranging from the quasi Madame Defarge Michele Bachmann to the porcine, pill-popping porcine propagandist Rush Limbaugh?

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Reality will continue to sink in with the American people and the massive fraud perpetrated by Wanniski, Reagan, Laffer, Graham, Bush(s), and all their “conservative” enablers will be seen for what it was and is. And the Obama administration can get about the business of repairing the damage and recovering the stolen assets of these cheap hustlers…

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Should we feel sorry for the Republicans?

Stephen dismantles right wing efforts to “rewrite history” in an effort to portray the GOP as hapless victims of bully Democrats.

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GOP lost without a compass following 2008 election

Ed Kilgore expects the Republican Party to pursue a strategy of playing to social conservatives and touting discredited fiscal policies.  Such policy brought the GOP into power, but after suffering losses in 2006 & 2008, pursuing the old game plan amounts to “conservative self-deception.”  A state of mind, “at least partially attributable to the rise of conservative ideological media networks that enable their consumers and producers alike to live in a parallel universe that is largely impervious to adverse information.”

From TheDemocraticStrategist.org 11 November 2008 post, by Ed Kilgore:

There are, however, two aspects of contemporary conservative self-justification that strike me as somewhat new.

The first is the iron conviction that there is a popular majority for core conservative policies at the very moment when they have been repudiated.[snip]

You two on the left, I'm on the fence about, but the rest of you... How do you sleep at night?

In a parallel development, during both the Reagan and Bush years, public support for conservative efforts to make the tax system more regressive has declined steadily once the free-lunch assumptions of supply-side economics proved to be a fraud.
[snip]
If today’s conservatives succeed in convincing each other to embrace a more forthright message assaulting entitlements, progressive taxation, public education, regulation of corporations and Wall Street, just to cite a few domestic policy examples, they are almost certainly cruising for more electoral bruising…

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