THE PARTY OF THE HISSY FIT

The Republican Party is now utterly and completely the antigovernment party.  According to Republican NY Times columnist, David Brooks, “It’s a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans’ economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It’s a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side — Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions — are mainstream. And, as a result, it’s a party that fundamentally doesn’t accept anyone else’s right to govern.”

Someone once wisely told me, “The ability to compromise with life is a mark of maturity.”  I hope the nation recognizes the maturity that it took for Dems in Congress to get this Healthcare Reform law passed.  And, I hope that we all can recognize the extreme immaturity that has been on display from the Republican Party in recent years:  our way or the highway; no negotiating; we’re always right; no compromising.

Timothy Egan at The Huffington Post writes that the Republican Party is now the “party of the hissy fit.”  That’s a phrase my Granny used to use when my little brother would throw a two-year-old temper tantrum.  The hissy fit is evident in congressional obstructionism, Republican’s lockstep “Hell NO,” and in Tea Partier racial slurs and threats of violence.  And you’d think that Republicans would be all over the media to disavow these extremists’ threats, but instead of denouncing the Tea Partiers they are welcoming them into the fold for a perceived short-term electoral advantage.

David Frum (W.’s former speech writer who coined the phrase, “Axis of Evil”) has recently said of Republicans, “At the beginning of this process (Healthcare Reform) we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo.”  David Frum has now famously said that Senator DeMint’s threat of “Obama’s Waterloo” has become Waterloo for the Republicans.  

Frum’s wife, Danielle Crittenden, also writes, “The thuggish demagoguery of the Limbaughs and Becks is a trait we once derided in the old socialist Left. Well boys, take a look in the mirror. It is us now.”

Rigid conformity is being enforced in the Conservative/Republican Party, no dissent is allowed and the party must pay homage to the Tea Partiers, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News.  The Republican Party is no longer a party of ideas, it is one where the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia with only slogans and bumper stickers in place of a governing policy for a new century.

It’s actually pretty shocking to see the level of Republican immaturity in Congress. They’ve now gone so far as to refuse to work past 2:00pm, in retribution for losing all the marbles in their game of “chicken” on Healthcare Reform. They’ve even found an obscure Senate rule that makes it binding.  John McCain has announced that he and fellow Republicans, in a fit of pique that they lost the vote on Healthcare Reform, will not work with the majority to move our country forward.  This will surely be perceived by the electorate as obstruction without purpose. 

Already there’s a new poll out, Democracy Corps, that finds the Republican favorability among Independents has dropped 11 points, and dropped 12 points on the generic congressional ballot. The conventional wisdom about a wave election which would sweep Republicans into power in November may be upended, if that trend continues.

So, listen-up Republicans, you DO have some wise members of your party who are trying to wake you up before it’s too late. If you don’t pay attention to the voices of reason in your own party, it will be permanently branded in such a negative light that you’ll never make a real comeback.

There could be a voter backlash against this right-wing intransigent nuttiness, and the Democratic Party might benefit from Republican extremism.  But, I agree with David Brooks: this is not a good thing for our nation in the long run.  America needs to have two rational parties, and as David says, “And right now we don’t.”