What is happening in the Republican Party?

They are dissolving. You are right that they are lacking leadership. I’m afraid that they no longer stand for what they did originally. It would help them greatly if someone from their party came out against the nut jobs of the conservatives you see on the networks. I’m sure a historian or someone better versed in political science can answer better how it happened, but I think that somehow most Republicans have fallen to conservatism which has become confused with traditionalism and anti-progressiveness (is that a word?) I don’t mean to generalize, but it appears that in this unwillingness to accept the new and progressive, they’ve found a great deal of confirmation in religion for their beliefs. Distorted interpretations, maybe, but it seems to be good enough for them to use that as part of their platform now.

I am a moderate Democrat.
The Republicans can certainly get a lot of people agreeing with them on the outragious spending that has been done recently in the name of Stimulus.
That said, they are shooting themselves in the foot with these morons they attract for leadership positions. They need to move away from the Outraged Right, and stand by economically conservative issues, while embracing more liberal socail issues.

They are licking their wounds from being beaten in the last presidential election. They are trying to find a way to make their support of the last eight years seem even remotely credible. They are trying to find a way to distance themselves from a popular simpleton from Alaska. They are laying low, waiting for the Obama administration to make some sort of misstep so they can come charging in, nip at his heels, and take back some of the leverage they so woefully lack now.

@filmfann Is that spending any more outrageous than the outrage of the spending for the needless Iraq war? $800 billion and counting. Of that, nine billion missing and unaccounted for?

“All told, the bill for the Iraq war is likely to top $3 trillion. And that’s a conservative estimate. ” The Wasington Post.

They were drunk with power for eight years, and now they don’t know whether to . . . . Well, lets just hope they all go blind.

@Marina I completely agree.

I wrote the following in response to another question, but it also applies here:

Most of our first world counterparts have parliamentary systems where the right-left continuum is chopped up into numerous small parties, so the parties on the extremes are relatively tiny compared to the system as a whole. In America, we have a two-party system so that each party represents a governing coalition of what would be several parties in any other system.

On the right, we have Christian social conservatives, who tend to include anti-minority, anti-immigrant white supremacists, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-progress traditionalists, gun nuts, and Holy Joes who would like to use the power of the state to impose their Biblical morality (or, in the extreme, a theocracy) on everyone else. We also have libertarians, who want a smaller, less expensive, hands-off government. Then we have the economic conservatives, the corporate fat cats, the plutocrats, and the extended families of the Capitalist class, who are simply interested in things being managed in such a way that they get richer (the country be damned if it gets in the way of profits).

Back in the Nixon-Eisenhower days, the Republican Party had what we would now call “moderate” conservatives, like William F. Buckley and Kevin Phillips, who in the tradition of Edmund Burke, were models of civility, public spirit and intellectual clarity. They saw themselves as a loyal opposition whose role was to urge a more considered “go slow” approach to the social transformations that liberals were pushing in the areas of civil rights, and a more equitable and compassionate society. (These, by the way, were a self-conscious attempt to realize the civil libertarian values of our founding fathers.)

But, since Reagan, these Rockefeller and Goldwater Republicans have become increasingly marginalized by the radical religious right, until now they are no longer welcome in the GOP. Many have defected to become Blue Dog Democrats. There are some members of the Capitalist class, like the Kennedys and Jay Rockefeller who have defected to the Democrats because they see a more equitable society (with a large, affluent middle class) as better for business than a less equitable society consisting of a deeply debt-ridden working class, lorded over by a small hereditary aristocracy of the super-rich, a la Bush I and Bush II.

The more extreme a party becomes, the less legitimate it becomes over time. And this is true in any system. The transfer of wealth that occurred under Bush II ($4 gasoline, the sub-prime lending bubble, the outsourcing of government, etc.) was so rapacious as to drive the whole economy to the brink of collapse. The middle class, being economically illiterate thanks to 20 years of Republican rule, has no idea as to just how close we came to taking the whole world economy down with us. (And we are not out of the woods yet.) Nonetheless, it has become pretty obvious, to everyone but the hard core Religious Right, who tend to confuse political and religious belief, that conservative ideology is bankrupt. Things are so bad that only government intervention can get us out of it.

The Republican party offers us nothing new; so, in effect, it has chosen to double-down on crazy, and so will continue lose elections and get smaller until it is completely irrelevant. Obama’s drift to the Center may well be a calculated bid to ensure that Republicans stay in the minority for the next 20 years. Some are saying that if he shifts to the Left now, he gives the Right something to organize and mobilize against. But if he waits, and lets the Republicans implode, they may very well take the whole right wing with them when they go. I sincerely hope so. I am so tired of the Christian Right and know-nothing conservative ideologues.

First off, in politics, the truth doesn’t matter, never has, never will. But for many, many years, starting with Richard Nixon, Republicans became far more masterful at playing this game than did Democrats. They knew that a well placed scandal, or an accusation that painted the opposition as somehow less patriotic, less American was far more persuasive to a large number of Americans than substantive debate. Though there is still a strong appetite in America for the truth, fear has always been and will always be a more visceral and far quicker way to win hearts and minds. Whether it be a matter of too much integrity or not enough balls or some combination thereof, Democrats have not been as adept over the last 40 years or so at exploiting this flaw in the human condition as have Republicans. And they had a good run.

Now, unfortunately for the Republicans, their core economic philosophy has been repudiated, and whereas Republicans, regardless of their ruthless and relentless pursuit of winning elections at any cost, at least had real philosophies, real principals, and real differences between their ideals and beliefs and those of liberals and Democrats. And the Republicans did many things that seemed like very good ideas in terms of building their party, like cozying up to the Evangelical Christians. But over time, the pursuit of winning elections and a steadfast adherence to party orthodoxy did not allow for the party to mature and change with the times. And ideas became outdated and irrelevant, but because Republicans still knew how to win an election, many people did not notice, and they continued to allow themselves to be motivated by fear and a belief in core conservative ideals, even though they no longer exactly matched core Republican ideals.

Republican in fact in pursuit of power let the fox run the henhouse….they have always believed in the power of free markets and minimal governmental intrusion into the affairs of business, but at one time it was tempered by common sense. Eventually however, the most powerful people in the party became the ones who were the wealthiest, who had the most to lose by doing the right thing, and the religious conservatives who rejected scientific knowledge and reason. So when it became clear to the majority of America that the core ideals of the party had become too rigid, too out of touch with the realities of modern life, too unconcerned with the haves and not concerned enough with the have nots and essentially at a time when the Republican Party stuck to their trickle down economic philosophies, still committed to giving the corporations all manner of breaks, even at a time when the heads of these industries were all being caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and at a time when their greed was essentially taking down our economy and the prosperity of all Americans while we were at it.

So, essentially, all the real intelligent members of the Republican party decided that either they had no home, or that their home was somewhere other than the Republican Party. It’s not as though thinking Republicans still don’t think of themselves as Republicans, or at least Conservatives, but they’ve lost their passion for what the party is offering, which at the current time is more of the same failed rhetoric, a whole bunch of fear and divisiveness, and zero new ideas. But of course, those who still cling to those outmoded ideals, to party identity, to the win at any cost mentality are more than happy to be free of the stabilizing influence of the cooler heads within the party, and essentially, they have become the mouthpieces of the party.

Here’s what I think….those who have bought the craziest lies and misconceptions about their political enemies have the most emotionally invested in being “right”. For many of them, it’s a matter of survival for their brand of crazy, and they have learned well that often times it’s the big lies that get the most attention, that win the most hearts and minds, and that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. The people who are left defending the indefensible are those who can not accept that they were wrong about ANYTHING, and they are as such the ones who won’t back down, and they will scream to the rafters.

I expect that conservatism hasn’t died…either saner heads will prevail ultimately in the party, or conservatives will gravitate to Libertarianism and Republicanism will be relegated to the trash heap of history. Since the opposition party always comes back after election cycles like 2008, in 2010 we shall see whether or not their hollow message of fear based on nothing but being the opposition for the sake of being the opposition will carry enough water to create perceived momentum and reunite all factions of the party or not.