Republican Apocalypse

GOP Horsemen of the Apocalypse

In 2004 almost 60 millions of Americans voted for war, famine, pestilence and disease. In 2008 this platform received 55% of the white vote. Apparently, many people have a death wish.
If the GOP exists in 2048, its notions may again become fashionable.

You Had To Be There

Almost everyone believes the poll numbers. After the Republicans have rigged many recent elections, I remind that it is much easier to distort the polls.
Aside from a number of well-paid trolls on the Internet, I have encountered no John McCain supporters. [Very few people prefer homelessness, joblessness and economic disaster. Even fewer are willing to be vaporized to further the dreams of empire.]
The ordinary citizens have been bullied and brain washed into submissiveness. I witnessed our Republic in 1950, when Americans stood up and fought for their rights. You had to be there.

Would Goldwater Have Voted for McCain?

By Sam Stein, HuffPost

John McCain is prone to tout himself as a "Goldwater Republican," the inheritor of a party and ideology that his Senate predecessor from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, helped shape decades ago.

But Goldwater's own family members say that, if the family patriarch were alive today, he would be sour on McCain and shudder at the kind of conservatism that the current GOP nominee is proposing.

"I don't know if he would recognize the Republican Party today," Alison Goldwater Ross, a registered Democrat and granddaughter of the 1964 GOP presidential candidate, told The Huffington Post. "I'm sure if we were to raise his ashes from the Colorado River... he would be going, 'What? This is not my vision. This is not my party.'"

Such bewilderment, Ross offered, would extend to McCain, the man who took over Goldwater's seat in the Senate in 1987 and currently is the GOP standard-bearer. The two Arizonans clashed on several occasions during their political careers. Goldwater, as documented in "Pure Goldwater," a book by the Senator's son Barry Jr., was depressed and angered by McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal. Later in his career, a rift developed between the two after McCain used Goldwater's name -- without his permission -- for fundraising purposes.

"My grandfather felt that he was deceived by McCain," she said. "Because he looked at McCain and said, here was this young guy who has a lot of potential in the Republican Party, who is coming through the ranks, and then he pulled something like this. My grandfather had to ask, 'Is this something I want to be close to?'"

Rebranding Republicans

Rebranding Republicans

Robert Borosage, Tom Paine

"We're going to give you the change you deserve."
—House Minority Leader John Boehner

That's not a threat; it's a promise—from the Republican congressional leaders. Really. Led by perpetually tanned House leader John Boehner, Republicans have suddenly discovered that the country wants change—and they have decided to offer it to us. Washington is broken and they promise to fix it. They rolled out a new slogan—"the change you deserve"—to be followed by a new "American Families Program."

(The campaign ran into trouble from the start: An alert blog—Bluestem Prairie—revealed that the slogan is the registered advertisement for the anti-depressant Effexor XR—which, come to think of it, might just be what Boehner needs these days.)

Republicans for change; now that's a switch. Until last week, congressional Republicans have been systematically, resolutely and consistently committed to obstruction, not change. It was a clear strategy. No minority ever gets blamed if nothing gets done. After Democrats took over the majority of both Houses in 2006, Republicans set out to obstruct everything they could. Then they would run against a do-nothing Congress, accusing the Democrats of breaking their promises. Sort of like knee-capping the postman and then complaining about the mail being late.

They went about this with Tom DeLay-like discipline. The Senate minority set a new record for filibusters before the first session was over. The president issued a record number of veto threats. House Republicans perfected procedural tricks that would put sand in the gears. As late as last week, they switched their votes on a resolution celebrating mothers on Mother's Day simply to obstruct business on the Senate.

They blocked the resolution to set a date to get the troops out of Iraq. They blocked extending health care to children. They blocked allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs. They blocked overturning subsidies to big oil and investing them in alternative energy.

But despite their success in gumming up the works, the strategy hasn't been working out too well for them. Congress has grown less popular, but increasing majorities think the solution is to throw out Republicans, not Democrats. Twenty-nine Republicans looked at the race and decided to retire. Republicans suffered stunning special election defeats in former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's seat in Illinois (to an anti-war candidate) and in a solidly Republican district in Louisiana (despite their running ads painting the Democrat as an Obama clone). Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned that they faced "real disaster" this fall unless they changed course. "We can't win solely by tying our opponents to Barack Obama and his liberal views," Boehner concluded. "We also have to prove Republicans are agents of change."

"Our brand is still under repair," Boehner noted in a presentation for his Republican colleagues. So he called out the marketing gurus. Over the next week, he promises to roll out a new agenda to go with the new slogan. With the open seats, Republican candidates not scarred by the past can run as agents of change. If John McCain, a 35-year veteran of the Beltway, can market himself as a maverick for change, why not the House Republicans?

But Boehner's rollout is likely to run into craters a lot more perilous than the slogan pothole. Every Republican candidate for Congress will have to answer a few basic questions: Are you with Bush and McCain on sustaining the war in Iraq? Do you support Bush and McCain's economic policies—the tax cuts, the corporate trade deals, the privatization of Social Security, the unraveling of employer-based health care?

If you are not with Bush and McCain, why should Republicans support you? If you are with them, why would the eight in 10 Americans looking for a fundamentally new direction vote for you?

But no one believes in the magic of marketing more than politicians, eager to repackage themselves as the new Coke. Forget consistency. Forget conservatism. Boehner and his colleagues aren't worried about learning from the failures of the past years. They are worried about survival. And a snappy slogan, a new bumper sticker, and a fresh jingle may be the best hope they have.

This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post.