In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a couple of scholars from liberal and conservative think tanks, discuss the state of American politics.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

And a word of advice for a mainstream media terrified of being portrayed as partisan.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Republicans and the media, conservative or otherwise, to change their ways. It won’t be happening in the immediate future. It’s taken four decades for the diseased parasite to work its way deep into the conservative movement and its not about to leave voluntarily. Change will likely only happen by way of the ballot box.

In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.

Which it will. Until demographics catches up and bites Republicans on the ass (30 percent of the population will be Hispanic by 2050), expect matters to worsen. The only other hope at ending the current state of insanity and ensuing political gridlock is Republicans losing a number of elections in succession. It might be the catalyst needed for a self-awakening within conservative ranks.

In the meantime, the wingnuts on the right will continue to run the asylum while a weak-kneed MSM laments on how both sides do it.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

In case you missed this one from last week, it’s a beaut.

A speech from a Georgia Republican state representative surfaced last week in which he compared women seeking abortions of stillborn fetuses to cows and pigs.

State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term.

He then recalled his time working on a farm:

“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

Unbelievable. There are no more words to describe these people. It’s as if right-wing crazies all crawled out at the same time from behind rotting woodwork and are now in desperate need to make their presence known.

This is what happens when a political party with a strong history of evangelical lunacy and racism built into its core spends 30 years pandering to nutjobs, extremists and bigots within the party and then wakes up one morning to discover that their President is a black guy named Barack Obama. What you’re currently witnessing is the Republican party’s implosion as the fringe element goes mainstream.

Terry England is not some solitary whack-job talking about the voices he hears in his head which lets him know that pregnant women are no different than cows and pigs. Terry England is a Republican state congressman who is expressing the same type of condescending, dangerous and misogynistic beliefs held by Republican politicians (almost all male) in Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Arizona who wish to pass (or have passed) repressive legislation against women and their reproductive rights.

The insanity has gone viral in conservative and Republican ranks which is what led writer Soraya Chemaly to point out that, “The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind.”

Not the entire country; just it’s right-wing. The question is whether enough Americans understand what’s going on before it’s too late.

Here is what a lost mind sounds like when given a bit of power and a microphone.

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he’s got this one right.

All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.

But where have these party leaders been over the past five years, when all the forces that distort the G.O.P. were metastasizing? Where were they during the rise of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck? Where were they when Arizona passed its beyond-the-fringe immigration law? Where were they in the summer of 2011 when the House Republicans rejected even the possibility of budget compromise? They were lying low, hoping the unpleasantness would pass.

Unfortunately for Brooks and his fellow conservatives, it’s a little late to be grumbling now. The current state of Republican decadence has been decades in the making going back to Reagan. It built up steam under the presidency of the hapless George W. and maxed out at crazy stupid with the election of Barack Obama.

Now that Republicans have successfully alienated immigrants, Hispanics, non-Christians, minorities and women, there aren’t enough millionaires and 65 year old dumb white guys to keep the GOP off life support for too much longer. The party of the Koch brothers, Limbaugh and Fox News are now reaping what they’ve sown for all these years.

Republicans are running a pathetic clown show and they have only themselves to blame because…

Leaders of a party are supposed to educate the party, to police against its worst indulgences, to guard against insular information loops. They’re supposed to define a creed and establish boundaries. Republican leaders haven’t done that.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

In your wildest hallucinogenic-induced nightmare, you’d have a problem making up stuff like this. From lovely South Carolina…

To be on the ballot as a Republican in Laurens County, you do not have to be “just” Republican.

You, apparently, have to be the “right kind” of Republican.

You must oppose abortion, in any circumstances.

You must uphold the right to have guns, all kinds of guns.

You must favor, and live up to, abstinence before marriage.

You must be faithful to your spouse. Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender, and you are not allowed to favor any government action that would allow for civil unions of people of the same sex.

You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.

These are just a few of the 28 principles of Republicanism, some taken from the Jeffersonian view of democracy, that candidates must pledge to adhere to if they want to be allowed on the Laurens County Republican primary ballot.

The insanity has undoubtedly reached new levels. The right kind of Republican? Where in history have we heard about purity tests of this sort before? Something about blond hair, blue eyes and unfailing loyalty to the Fatherland.

The party of small government and strict adherence to the Constitution apparently has no problem micro-managing the private lives of their citizens. And you can forget about your right to privacy. If you want to be a Republican, then be ready to get a knock on the door at 3 AM and having your hard drive confiscated.

Knock! Knock! Porno Police! Open up now!

And if you’re unmarried and wish to get on the primary ballot for the Laurens County Republican Party, then be prepared to walk around broadcasting the fact that you’re still a virgin. How enticing to any conservative wishing to enter politics.

Hi. I’m Bob. I’m 42 years old, I want to be your new state senator and I have never had sex in my whole entire life. Really. Never. Vote for me.

If every Republican hoping to get on the ballot in Laurens County were to be honest, the end result would be that there would be no Republican candidates. Good luck attracting people who have never engaged in premarital sex unless there happens to be a whole bunch of Rick Santorums in your area…and even then you’d have to doubt their honesty on the matter.

Bottom line: if your idea of sound government is one where your sex life is open to scrutiny and policing by public officials; if you dream of a land where contraceptives are illegal and citizenship requires that a woman transfer control of her uterus to a panel of bureaucrats; a place where the blurring of line between church and state makes the two indistinguishable and a place where morality is determined not by you but by government decree…

…if that is your idea of government, then the Republican party should now and forever be your choice.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

What? You thought wingnuts could not get more ridiculous than they already have been? If so, you were wrong. So very, very wrong.

A Fort Wayne lawmaker’s rant against the Girl Scouts went viral Monday after he called them a “radicalized organization” that supports abortion and promotes “homosexual lifestyles.”

Rep. Bob Morris, R-Fort Wayne, sent a letter to Indiana House Republicans on Saturday explaining why he was the only member in the chamber not to sign onto a resolution last week celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

The resolution applauded the group “for the strong positive influence it has had on the American woman.”

Morris said he did some Web-based research and found allegations that the Girl Scouts are a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood, that they allow transgender females to join, “just like any real girl,” and encourage sex.

Morris also said the fact that first lady Michelle Obama is honorary president “should give each of us reason to pause before our individual and collective endorsement of the organization.”

“I challenge each of you to examine these matters more closely before you extend your name and your reputation to endorse a group that has been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values,” he said in the letter.

See? This is what years of watching Fox, tuning in to Limbaugh and paying the least bit of attention to assholes like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson does to a person. It turns them into delusional dumbasses who see bogeymen around every corner. It has them painting horns and tail on a black president and his family and it has them claiming that the Girl Guides are an organization of perverted, abortion-seeking, sex-addicted, transgendered, cookie-selling, commie, lesbian sluts.

Basically, it turns these pathetic creatures into right-wing nutjobs of the type represented by Rep. Rob Morris.

The GOP has gone from being a political party of ideas into having become a cult and gathering place for bigots, hate-mongers, religious zealots and the deranged. When your party is represented by individuals like Rob Morris, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and these people have gone from being the exception to having become the norm, you have a serious problem on your hands.

Republicans have allowed crazy to go mainstream in their party and there will be a political price to pay.

(h/t: Angry Black Lady Chronicles)
__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

In the face of Republicans reluctantly ending their opposition and allowing the payroll tax cuts measure to pass through Congress, Senator John McCain described his political party in this way:

“We’re dumb, but we’re not stupid. We did not want to repeat the debacle of last December. It’s not that complicated.”

While there’s not much difference in parsing dumb and stupid (they pretty much have the same meaning), I think most of us can agree on what it is McCain was admitting. Basically, he’s saying that Republicans never do anything because it’s the right thing to do. Never. It’s always about politics for them.

Did anyone believe for a second that Republicans backed down from their obstructionist ways this one time because they honestly cared about the tens of millions of middle class workers who would benefit from a two percentage point increase in their paychecks? Or because they care a damn about the millions of jobless who will see their benefits extended in a time of economic crisis? I hope not for you would have to either be a complete moron or a blind partisan fool to believe that Republicans are anything other than self-serving, heartless bastards who finally understood that opposing a tax cut at this time was detrimental to their chances of winning in November.

Essentially, if an individual is not part of the one percent of society who fill their election coffers, Republicans don’t care much for them or about them. While trying to steal their vote in any way they can, the vast majority of Americans are little more than political pawns in the eyes of the modern GOP. Pawns who for whatever reason cannot see the manner in which they are being manipulated in the worst of ways. Republican policy which favors health insurers’ profits over the millions who cannot afford any health insurance. Policy which favors big oil’s record profits over the safeguarding of the environment and a fragile warming planet. And policy which favors the taking down of a president over the basic needs and welfare of Americans.

The Republican party is dumb but not stupid? Yeah, most rational thinking people get it.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

From The Onion:

Saying the now critically endangered species of politician is at high risk for complete extinction within the next 10 years, Beltway-area conservationists announced plans Monday for a new captive breeding program designed to save moderate Republicans.

According to members of the Initiative to Protect the Political Middle (IPPM), centrist Republicans, who once freely roamed the nation calling for both economic deregulation and a return to Reagan-era tax rates on the wealthy, are in dire need of protection, having lost large portions of their natural terrain to the highly territorial Evangelical and Tea Party breeds.

“Our new program is designed to isolate the few remaining specimens of moderate Republicans, mate them in captivity, and then safely release these rare and precious creatures back into the electorate,” said IPPM’s Cynthia Rollins, who traces the decline of the species to changes in the political climate and rampant, predatory fanaticism. “Within our safe, enclosed habitats, these middle-of-the-road Republican Party members can freely support increased funding for public education and even gay rights without being threatened by the far-right subgenus.”

Nice idea although some would argue that it’s too late for any kind of recovery plan; the RINO, they’ll tell you, has already gone extinct. I don’t agree. I believe there are moderate Republicans out there but they’re too afraid to show their faces for risk of getting their heads blown off. Understandable. Simply stating, for example, that one agrees with the 97 percent of the world’s climatologists who point to man-caused global warming is enough to force a Republican to surrender their IDR (Idiot Decoder Ring) and tinfoil hat at the nearest GOP headquarters. Sanity and rational thought are not looked upon with great favor in Wingnuttia.

So what’s it going to take for moderate Republicans to make a comeback in a political party that has veered so far to the right that Ronald Reagan would be asked to return his decoder ring if he was around today? A thorough thrashing at the ballot boxes in November would do the trick, I think.  Nothing repudiates refudiates behavior and policy better than a majority of citizens telling politicians to take their Stone Age, regressive ideas and shoving it.

__

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

From the compassionate conservative wing of the Republican party, Rep. Larry Pittman of North Carolina speaks out.

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner,” Pittman wrote in the email. “If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

How long before execution by guillotine for liberals and atheists is proposed by Republicans?

The surprise or concern is not that wingnut politicians say stuff like this. Republicans have been running on CRAZY for a while now. No, the real worry should be that enough Americans voted for this guy to get him elected.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Saw this on Bartcop and at first glance, I thought it was cute but somewhat of an oversimplification…

…and then on further reflection, I realized it was in fact an accurate depiction of the Republican mindset. They would never admit as much but every policy proposal they make is geared toward helping the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor. The entire claim to fame of trickle-down economics, for example, as put forth by conservatives is that top-bracket tax cuts leads to a vibrant economy, more jobs and higher wages for the working class. Thirty years of trickle-down economic policies tells a different story but that doesn’t faze these people. They never let facts mess up a good story.

If you’re a Republican lacking either a fat bank balance or an umbilical cord, at least be aware that your political party doesn’t give a damn about you.  And if you think differently, then you deserve exactly what you get from the politicians you elect into office.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time when a degree of sanity did exist within the ranks of the Republican party, a time when sanity had not yet been overrun by delusion and madness…

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

~ Barry Goldwater, November 1994, as quoted in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006)

And now the religious right has been joined by the Tea Party crowd whose understanding of compromise and its crucial role in a functioning democracy is as deficient and dangerous as that of the Pat Robertsons of the party.  I would go as far as to suggest that the Teapublicans in Congress pose a greater threat to the welfare of Americans than the combined efforts of every terrorist group in the world.  The first requirement in dealing with danger is recognizing its presence and no one has a problem understanding that terrorists pose a threat.  Not so with recognizing the danger presented by the slew of Tea Partiers in Congress where only a handful of conservatives have come to realize the destructive role these people play in making Congress an even more dysfunctional body.  As well-meaning as some within the Tea Party may be, their dogmatic and intolerant attitude to compromise and understanding (as that of the religious right), only aids in weakening the political system.

Incidentally, I just finished reading Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience over the holidays.  It’s a good read if you’re at all interested in the evolution of the conservative movement and learning how the Republican party turned into the authoritarian entity it is today.  Dean’s culprits are the religious right and the neoconservative wing of the party which have moved the GOP so far to the right that he believes the core principles of conservatism have been trampled upon and left unrecognizable – so far to the right has it shifted, says Dean, that he, a Goldwater conservative who has not altered his basic conservative beliefs, now finds himself stranded at the left of center.

___

And I did want to say thank you to all my readers and a sincere wish that the new year (and if we’re to believe the New Agers interpretation of the Mayan calendar, our final year as we know it) is a good one.

Thank you.

___

Follow MarioPiperniDotCom on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
.