The GOP Is Losing It

I'd argue the GOP never had it, but John Cole over at Balloon Juice puts up an excellent summation of the Republican disaster:

But, for whatever reason, the GOP simply can not figure it out. Michael Steele, the new RNC chairman is busy telling everyone there is absolutely no reason for anyone to trust the GOP, while the rest of them are spending their time running around comparing themselves to the Taliban. The reason Steele felt compelled to announce that the GOP can not be trusted is because everyone agrees they can not be trusted. He was merely stating the obvious. Rather than try to build trust, though, rather than sit back and take a breather, compose themselves, and plot a way forward for both the country and the GOP, the Washington Republicans seem intent on committing seppuku. Instead of rebranding themselves and putting forth an alternate vision, they seem to think that unified obstructionism based on the hope that things get worse is the real way forward for them. And they don’t realize that everyone sees through it.

The rest of the country figured it out...well, most of the rest of the country, anyway. There's still maybe a quarter of the US that believes this crap. But the political middle isn't buying it any more. Seven years or so after 9/11, when the GOP said something, that was the reality both inside and outside Washington. Katrina changed all that. People realized the GOP had no credibility in outside, everyday life anymore. Fifteen months later the Democrats were in charge of Congress, and then another two years put them in the White House too.

Republicans swore up and down that this was the best economy ever, and people started to look at their paychecks and saw the fact they hadn't gotten a raise in four years but in that same period of time their health insurance premiums went up 20%, and their 401(k) lost money. Nobody gives a damn about the Terror Threat Color Code of the day when the biggest employer in the county just laid off 8,000 people with no intention of ever coming back. They realized the GOP is full of shit and has been using them for years. As one friend told me, "We can spend trillions on a war with Iraq, but we can't spend a fraction of that on America."

So now at least Obama is trying. The Republicans are assuming that the Village reality, the one inside the beltway, is the same as in the heartland and the valleys and the plant towns and the farms.

It's not. GOP hasn't gotten that yet.