Party Planning

While engaging in the ritual self-flagellation of watching Fox News, a couple of thoughts popped into my head. One was I have serious masochistic tendencies, but I've known that since I was six. The other was new: why is there a Republican Party?

I mean, I know why we USED to have a Republican Party, by why do we STILL have one? The party my father knew as the GOP he wouldn't recognize today. He'd equate the current Republican Party to the John Birch Society, or something similarly fringe and irrelevant.

And if my father took a look at the current Democratic Party, he'd see in its sub-groups the core of what he would call Republicans. People who believe in modest-sized government, fiscal responsibility, and change only when absolutely needed. Whether you call them Blue Dog Democrats, or not, these representatives seem to fill the niche handled mostly by the Republicans until the George W. Bush Administration.

I am clearly not a political expert, so I can't put my finger exactly on when the Grand Old Party changed to something darker, meaner, and more intolerant, but if pressed I'd guess it was in the months immediately after 9/11. The Republican Party learned how to play to fear. They learned all it took to win was to frighten Americans with tales of dire consequences. In the face of those tactics, Democrats - or even old-school Republicans, who preferred to legislate based on reason and compromise, were helpless.

Leveraging fear worked wonderfully for Republicans, until the middle of the second term for George W. Bush. By then, every scrap of adrenaline had been squeezed out of us citizens. Our 'fear button' had been pressed so hard and so often, it began to have little effect. We yawned and said, "Yeah, Right ..."

And then came Health Care. At virtually every point along the way, the Republicans opted out of meaningful engagement and chose the path of fear. Nurturing the idea that President Obama was a closet socialist - or worse, and that Health Care was Step One in the grand plan for abolition of our freedoms. The same group that defended George Bush's secret, unauthorized, wiretaps of private citizens; the GOP that rubber-stamped his "If the President orders it, it's not illegal" policy, claimed that an attempt to widen Health Care for more Americans was a step towards dictatorship.

It was another play on fear, the only plank left in the bare Republican political platform.

And it leaves them irrelevant. The Democrats are a broad party, politically speaking. Groups within the Dems fought hard for conservative approaches to Health Care. Democrats fought with other Democrats to remove the public option, for example. Who needs Republicans, when you have perfectly sound conservatives among the Dems?

So here's my thought: Split the Democrats by moving the Blue Dogs, Pro-Lifers, and other conservatives into a new GOP. That would leave liberals and middle-of-the roaders in the Democratic Party. Then reconstitute the current Republican Party as a smaller third party extremist group under a different name. (Or hire them all as official Fox News consultants - they are anyway.)

And thus, restore balance to the universe ...