November 23, 2012 by David K. Sutton
The Conservative Republican Delusion
There are some Republicans who recognize that their party needs to change if it’s going to be competitive in future presidential elections. Yes, Republicans still hold a majority in the House of Representatives, and Republicans will be able to easily win a number of Senate and House races for years to come, but it’s the top office in the land where the math is not in their favor. When you’ve lost California’s 55 electoral votes before the contest has even begun, that’s a problem.
But there are other Republicans who believe the answer to their presidential election woes is to go hard right, to go more conservative. Simply put, these Republicans are delusional. These Republicans are so locked into their rigid ideology and narrow worldview that they cannot accept that a majority of the country disagrees with them.
To quote Rachel Maddow’s epic post-election rant:
Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, he really did win. He really was born in Hawaii, and he really is, legitimately, president of the United States again. And The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone’s guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism. – Rachel Maddow
And now some of these Republicans go on TV and talk about how the Republican Party has won more than 50% of the African-American vote in the past like that has any meaning in 2012 and beyond. These Republicans have selective memory. They reflect on events of the past that are favorable to them, and they conveniently ignore everything else.
There was a time when the Republican Party was your best bet for equal rights, although that isn’t saying much because neither party had a great record. There was a time when liberals were just as likely, if not more likely, to be found in the Republican Party. And yes, there was a time when African-Americans were just as likely, if not more likely, to vote Republican.
But that was a long time ago.
Since then a little thing called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, prompting then president Lyndon B. Johnson to quip, “We have lost the South for a generation.” The modern Republican Party has embraced with open arms all the racist elements that used to exist in the old Democratic Party. Fox News hosts and conservative pundits never point this out when they talk about the Democratic Party as the “segregationist party.” I wonder why that is?
Wake up! It’s 2012. If there is a segregationist party, it’s now the Republican Party. These ultra-conservative Republicans can continue to live their delusion, continue to “primary” more moderate Republicans with Tea Party candidates, and attempt to elect a more conservative presidential candidate in 2016. But if they do so, they will continue to lose, and that’s probably what it’s going to take for the moderates to take back their party. / image by DonkeyHotey
