Ramblings About The Republicans

I don’t want to write about politics but we might be witnessing something historic, and I want to know what I thought about it when and if it happened. Is the Republican Party, as we know it, dying? Arlen Specter, the senior senator from Pennsylvania, switched parties and became a Democrat. He left because the Republican Party has become caricatures of themselves, and the final straw was them preparing to attack him, along with two other moderate Republican senators, in their home states for voting with the Democrats on President Obama’s stimulus package. The Democrats were one seat short of a filibuster proof Senate majority, and the Republican’s simple minded, bully boy tactics that stopped working in 2002 gave them that seat. Trying to intimidate a 5th term senator was dumb. What were they hoping to accomplish? Did they even look at the results of his last election? He won the general election by more than he won the primary. The people of Pennsylvania like him. He called their bluff by switching parties, and now he doesn’t have to deal with a Republican primary or a vindictive party. The Democrats aren’t going to run anyone serious against him in their 2010 primary, and the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. They’re going to have to back a right wing nut, who will get crushed, or run a pale imitation of Specter and look stupid. They just gave Pennsylvania to Obama in 2012. He took office less than fifteen weeks ago. This move was extra dumb because the Democrats did the exact same thing to Massachusetts senator Joe Lieberman in 2006, less than three years ago, and he kept his seat by running as an Independent. How could the Republicans have this guy speak at their convention last fall and not remember that? Even if they do replace all the moderates with dyed in the wool fascists, they still don’t pick up any seats. The best they could hope for is not to lose any more, and they already have. The Republicans are becoming a regional, irrelevant footnote, and they don’t seem to know how to stop the collapse. They’re becoming the party for the shrinking demographic of the angry white guy. In five years will the Republican Party be the 20 million Rush Limbaugh fans and nothing else or will they figure out a way to step into the 21st century?