"Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

[GenuineRisk]

Well, in the interests of bi-partisanship, here's a piece ripping apart that WaPo op-ed. But not for the reasons you might expect. Highlights below, but the whole thing at the link:

http://doghouseriley.blogspot.com/20...s-late-is.html

The GOP hasn't "moved from the mainstream". It's gained more power. The "center of power" hasn't gone much of anywhere. It may have followed Goldwater West and South, thanks to the evil genius of Nixon, but it's not exactly a seismic shift from Joe McCarthy to Jesse Helms, from John Wayne to Glenn Beck. When th' hell was it Chuck Hagel's party? When was it Nelson Rockefeller's, for that matter? They called Truman a commie, for chrissakes.
__
Question: is all of this designed to palliate the conscience of the American centrist, or is it really what it purports to be, the slowest recognition of the extent of a brick wall since the Mogols? Eisenhower had to name Richard ****ing Nixon as his running mate. The contemporary Republican party was born in 1964, not coincidentally the same year the Johnson administration decided that black people could have some rights. It's the party of Bill Buckley's racism, and of Pat Buchanan's, as well as Steve King's, of Carl McIntire's religious mania and Pat Robertson's, as well as Rick Santorum's. It's the party which wrapped every little adventurist foreign excursion from Korea to Iraq II in patriotic fervor, and which found it necessary to rewrite the history of every last one (excepting, maybe, the Glorious Liberation of Grenada); Nixon's traitor hunt of 1946 was little different than Andrew Sullivan's in 2001, and, no, he's one of yours. No one with eyes and ears could possibly have missed this, apart, somehow, from the DLC and today's tiny island leper colony of sadder-but-wiser centrists.
__
Okay, sure: the Republican party has become increasingly dilatory and obtuse in the halls of power, but that's not a change of the last four years. Had Republicans had the power in 1981 they would have dispensed with all the Reagan sainthood bullshit and just rammed through their radical agenda, instead of getting Democrats to agree to do it for them. And there's no question this has been facilitated, both by a venal and cowardly Democratic party, and a venal and cowardly Press. But, really, enough of this stuff. I'm not gonna make common cause with Democrats, or rueful Republican centrists, who suddenly notice what the GOP has become, and expect a medal for saying so. The time to speak up was thirty years ago, when this stuff was just as plain, and was being covered by a transparent rewrite of unpleasant history, and a clear retrenchment on individual rights. Y'know, when Reaganism was the Wave of the Future the Republican platform had no more chance of actually governing than it does today. David Stockman was just as big a liar as Paul Ryan. I'm going to settle for having been right about this **** all along, and hope we don't kill too many innocents when it all blows up. Don't offer to help me shovel now. You've already done enough.

[Riot]

The contemporary Republican party was born in 1964, not coincidentally the same year the Johnson administration decided that black people could have some rights. It's the party of Bill Buckley's racism, and of Pat Buchanan's, as well as Steve King's, of Carl McIntire's religious mania and Pat Robertson's, as well as Rick Santorum's. It's the party which wrapped every little adventurist foreign excursion from Korea to Iraq II in patriotic fervor, and which found it necessary to rewrite the history of every last one (excepting, maybe, the Glorious Liberation of Grenada); Nixon's traitor hunt of 1946 was little different than Andrew Sullivan's in 2001, and, no, he's one of yours. No one with eyes and ears could possibly have missed this, apart, somehow, from the DLC and today's tiny island leper colony of sadder-but-wiser centrists.

I certainly agree with that. I was bred, born and raised as a northern businessman Republican, and that's exactly what internal struggles in the party have always been about.

But Bill Buckley, in spite of his obvious racism, squashed the evangelical wing and wrapped the party in the cloak of wealth, intellectualism and elitism, successfully keeping Republican power in the hands of the grandees.

They lost that power in the 2010 election, and now they are fighting to regain it from the crazies that won't vote their financial interests: Santorum against chosen robot Romney - to get ownership of Congress back.

The Democratic party has moved to be what centrist Republicans used to be - see Obama (and the electoral support he received, and continues to receive, from centrist Republicans for whom the party has moved far right, out from under them).

We have very few true liberals in our Congress nowadays. This country desperately needs a very progressive party to help drag the entire country back left, into the 21st century. We have the moderate centrist party - the Dems; and the right wing party, the Republicans, and a third party splitoff with two wings that have surprising power nowadays, the evangelicals and ultra conservatives who want to eliminate government entirely.