During the past week in a post presidential election haze, rather than circling the wagons and reevaluating the political landscape, the vocal instigators of the conservative right took up where they left off pre-election day. Ms's Malkin, Coulter, Ingram and Mr's Hannity, Norquist, Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Beck are preaching impeachment, secession, divisiveness, and recalcitrance. Just last evening O'Reilly had the gall to characterize the national media's treatment of Romney as vicious. This from a man who played right along with the racist birthers. And I couldn't be happier, for all their saber-rattling signals is the death knell of the Republican party, a death that comes at their hands.
While their rants feed a certain misinformed base, it is a base that has lost momentum and size. In the last week how many frustrated Republicans have turned on Fox News channel, heard the same narrow-minded rants they heard over the past 4-years, remembered how these same ranters all but guaranteed a Romney victory was virtually assured, "Just look at our polls," and turned the network off, some for good? (election night coverage on Fox News Channel was priceless as the look of shell-shock was common and then Liz Cheney exploded with a tirade about an out-of-touch Republican party) How large a part did Rupert Murdoch play in Mitt Romney's downfall? A HUGE part. Every bit as huge as Karl Rove's miss-analysis of the populations demographics. And the Koch brothers funding the tea-party agenda can't be ignored. Unless you were a white male, for the most part, the Republican message was not geared for you. And this is a political miscalculation they may never recover from going forward.
Look at the House of Representatives election map for Texas (http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/). The districts along the whole southern border of the state and the state's urban centers were won by Democrats. This blue creep will only continue northward with each succeeding election until Texas is a blue state in 2020 or 2024. That's 39 additional electoral votes and the fat lady is singing earlier. Nationwide last Tuesday, quite a few House Republican Incumbents retained their seats by slim majorities, indicating that are they to continue their obstructionist stance they will certainly be unseated in 2014. Unless the Republican party re-calibrates and tapers their social extremism they will be relegated to 3rd party status in a few short years. Yet after a week, the talking bumble heads have shown no inclination to alter their myopic message. Rather than lead the charge for modernity they have elected to continue spewing to their miscreant base.
And before you get all excited about Senators Rubio or Cruz as the future of the Republican appeal to the minority electorate (having given up on the African-American electorate), you should realize that, though both can speak Spanish, they are both of Cuban ex-pats heritage and as such, are not deemed simpatico by the majority of those of Puerto Rican, Mexican, or Central American heritage.
Can you hear Palin's silence? Yet there are still those among the right whom revere her as a bellwether of the Republican party (after that whopping $5k donation to Romney's campaign someone should audit her PAC). The party's worse case scenario will come to fruition in 2016 when Palin runs as a 3rd party candidate, having already been disenfranchised by the Republican hierarchy. And the moderate Republicans just shake their heads, having the foresight to see the writing on the wall. Just ask ex-Senator Scott Brown. I thought it quite telling that the commercials for Republican candidates for Congress, in the two states I had access to, never identified the candidates as Republican. Is that a ringing endorsement of the party's platform or what?
By 2014 I would imagine the bulk of the extremist conservative talking heads will have been replaced for the national audience by a new breed of more intellectually astute commentators who will be able to connect with a broader swath of the electorate. So all you viners whom believe those mentioned in the first paragraph preach the gospel, get your shortwave radios so you can keep abreast of their shows in Baton Rouge, Butte, Biloxi or wherever they land.
And come 2016 and that's not the case and they're still spewing their divisive rhetoric on the Fox News Channel, well then, get ready for Hilary with a Democratic Senate and House.
