What? Me Worry? It's too early to say who will win in November. But Republicans increasingly seem to think it won't be them.

They've figured it out! They must be psycho! Er, I mean, psychic!

Face it the republicans need to start thinking about 2016 for their next shot at the crown, they lost it this time because of two key things:

1. They underestimated Obama.

2. They underestimated US!

I disagree CPO. I think the Republicans' weakness doesn't necessarily stem from underestimating anything, but rather from the random nature of (stealing a word from epidemiology) their support vectors. A few minutes ago, I describe today's Republican Party as "two-headed". It doesn't really have a single, shared core value. It's a rather tenuous coalition of mostly religious reactionaries and egocentric greed-mongers, the latter supported by a cadre of anti-tax minions who don't realize that they're being duped into supporting enrichment of a chosen few. Somewhere mixed in there are some true libertarians as well, as well as another cadre of anti-tax minions who don't realize that they're being duped into supporting what is literally a pointlessly ideological concept.

So the challenge for the GOP is to craft a campaign that makes these five separate groups happy - actually, that makes one of these groups happy, and makes three of the other four think that they're going to be happy. (The true libertarians are so insignificant in number that making them happy doesn't matter much.)

That's not impossible - the different core values that each of these groups venerate aren't strictly in conflict with each other - but with limited political capital, it is sometimes a big challenge to put up enough window-dressing to convince these large groups of minions that they're going to be getting something out of this for their efforts. The size of the intersection between the two large groups of minions helps - sometimes you can gain support from someone because you make them think you're going to at least half-satisfy them - but the more folks outside that intersection, the more likely it is that you're going to undersatisfy enough of them off to bring the whole house of cards down.

The way I see it, the Republicans, because of how the party is built on top of a cynically combined set of unrelated values, are much more dependent on the luck of the dice than the Democrats, who generally can capitalize on the full support of the base simply by presenting a compelling picture of how the alternative works directly against what the base practically all hold strongly as their own core value.

#1.2:Face it the republicans need to start thinking about 2016 for their next shot at the crown, they lost it this time because of two key things:

Yes it was two things all right: shock and stupidity. In that order!

Great analysis.

My only addition would be there is no unifier in the Republican Party to pull these factions together. The far right will never be happy, there all or nothing let the country go down the drain mentality doesn't lend it's self to anyone leadership. The moderates have gone underground or left the party - centrists get nervous about the money support..so they rarely go out on a limb...so there the party sits.

The moderates have gone underground or left the party

<raises hand>

I have always held two conflicting opinions about the Repub nomination. First, that it is mighty difficult to see them nominating anyone but Mitt. Second, that the TP Types are going to demand a bomb-thrower and they may well get one.

Knowing that both can't be true, the question has been how the two can be resolved. Over the past couple months, we have gotten the answer, which is that they cannot be resolved without mutual destruction. Which is what is happening before our eyes.

Looking back now, it is real hard to see how most of those "frontrunners" could ever have had any credibility whatsoever, but they did. Michell Bachman, Rick Perry.... Herman Cain fergawdssakes......the TP types were so united in their hatred of Barry that they had themselves convinced that the name of their nominee wasn't that important because anyone who could breathe would beat him. Meanwhile Romney had successfully developed a perfect strategy for the 2008 election except....uh....what year is it now.....???

All wrong about all that, of course, but oh well.

Obama 2012

It's too early to say who will win in November, but Republicans increasingly seem to think it won't be them...

...and for the first time in a long time, they would be correct!

If ANY ONE of those idiots running for the GOP should happen to win the presidency...America loses!

My only addition would be there is no unifier in the Republican Party to pull these factions together.

Aside from the greedy super-rich, the rest of the GOP's factions have never gotten anything but breadcrumbs thrown to them when their chosen party was in office. Abortion is still legal, the USA is still not a theocracy, not everyone has a gun yet, minorities still get to use the same water fountains and public facililties as everyone else, and so on.

The real picture here is that the GOP was at some point in the 1960's or 1970's gradually taken over by the 1% and turned to do their bidding, while all of the other conservative adherents were promised more and more and more radical things which were increasingly out of the mainstream and unrealistic. By enraging their base and enabling their extremists, the 1% were able to push through empty-suit candidates like Reagan who would simply stand aside and let his handlers make all the decisions. But by the 1994 election, it was no longer enough. They had been promised all of these outrageous social strictures and been denied over and over and over again, and what was a movement bent on changing the shape of America became a movement bent on taking revenge for being labeled and marginalized as too extreme. As much as the Republicans succeeded in the statehouse and in Congress as putting stupid, extreme, bigoted, hateful legislation through, the public refused to stop progressing into the future. Gingrich led the charge with a blast of derogatory labels, and by the time Bush was fraudulently ushered into office in 2000, it was all about hitting back and hitting hard.

So instead of a movement designed to encourage participation in its views, it became a movement increasingly isolated by its views. I don't think anyone can credibly state that the 2000 or 2004 elections represented any kind of mandate by the public to embrace regressive, backwards views or policies designed to enrich the wealthy. The 2000 elections don't count at all, in my opinion, and the 2004 elections were poisoned by a lurid combination of Islamophobia and homophobia. By 2006 the frog was starting to feel the heat, despite efforts to boil it slowly, and multiple, inexcusable failures by the GOP to address America's real problems bit them in the ass. But the dead ends of this dead-end movement were still potent enough to drag down progress in 2010, and we can all see what we got.

Now, the mask is off. The GOP's agenda is revealed as nothing but hatred for The Other, and the puppetmasters controlling all of these proxy groups whose only purpose is to distract from their looting and theiving have been exposed. Thus the 1% vs. the 99% meme. The speed and ferocity with which this idea caught on is tremendous, and will define politics for several years going forward I think. And the GOP may be on its deathbed. They have done an unbelievable amount of damage to their brand, and it is really going to be difficult for them to articulate what they stand FOR in the coming elections. They've screamed and railed AGAINST the 99% so hatefully, so angrily, that they don't seem to represent anyone else (other than a smattering of extremists who literally have nothing to offer America except their rejection of all other Americans).

let's not get cocky about teapublicons thinking that they are going to lose in November

 there needs to be constant reporting about how teathuggery expects to win by any means available to them such as:

The bottom line is 4 more years, Look to Congress, if you want to see a capsule of the G O P. and they don't give a diddle squat, about the American people. The leaders for the Presidential nomination are Losers, mostly ones who can't get even elected in their own state for dog catcher (Hasbens), (Wasbens), and (Wannapleasebees). Yes they are going to win.....Not.

The GOP's agenda is revealed as nothing but hatred for The Other, and the puppetmasters controlling all of these proxy groups whose only purpose is to distract from their looting and theiving have been exposed.

It strikes me that making Grover Norquist and his kin the official poster children for exposing that agenda could be helpful. Since we already know that the political advertising's going to go dirty early and just get worse from there (courtesy of Citizens United), I'd love to see the low-information voters meet the people who really pull the strings.

I think the GOP knew in 08 that 2012 was a lost cause for them. Even with their victories in 2010 they had to know they were in trouble. No way the party leadership would seriously consider Palin ( anyone hear that she thought [thinks?] that the Queen is head of British government), Bachmann (pray away the gay), Santorum (whom the Amish In western PA thought was a little too conservative), Gingrich (take your pic of problems), Paul (lets go back to the policies that allowed WW II to take hold), Cain (u beki beki stan stan), or Huntsman (who dared to serve his country under Obama) to run if they had any hope of winning this election?

I still worry about Iran, I still worry about Greece, and I still worry about the thing I don't know enough about to worry about it.

If Greece bombs Iran, it's REALLY gonna be bad. <^_^>

But right now, Old Smart&Skinny is looking pretty good. He channels Muhammed Ali while the Repubs continue on the Sonny Liston theme.