But recent events (oh, you know what they are) have led to the practically universal belief that the Republicans are splitting apart -- thanks to the TeaBaggers and their obsessions -- and that by this time some year soon, there won't be a Republican Party any more.
Years ago, I advocated for RICOing the bastards, because I saw the Rs as a criminal enterprise, bent on war and bloodshed around the world and pillage and plunder at home. Oh my, the reaction was fierce and fast:
"You can't DO that!!! The Republicans are NECESSARY!!!! If any political party should be destroyed it's the DEMOCRATS!!!!" Etc.And this went on for quite some time. The issue was ultimately focused on that last bit: literally destroying the Democratic Party by infiltration, subversion, and when needed, scandal and prosecution.
That's when I came to understand just what so much of the A-list "Lefty" blogosphere was all about. It was a sophisticated psy-op set up and operated to the advantage of Republicans, often by allegedly "ex-Republicans" (Markos, Arianna, and Aravosis all qualify on that account, and Digby was raised in a right wing military household) or by so-called "left-libertarians" (such as Greenwald, et al, though Greenwald has never demonstrated anything "leftist" in his libertarianism.)
Taking any action or even advocating action that would actually cripple Republicans was considered way too rude to contemplate. It wasn't being "Progressive."
Right. This was going on years ago, during the Bush II disaster, when supposedly the Ds were gearing up to undo the mess that the Rs had made of things. But there was to be no undoing, you may have noticed, and the clamor from the leftosphere was, to say the least, muted, ever muted. Very strict control was kept on the way "the left" was allowed to criticize.
And throughout, the Ds were moving more and more to the right. As some of you may know, I campaigned for Howard Dean during the 2003-2004 Season. My efforts were inspired by Dean's call at the California Democratic Party Convention; he wanted to know what (the fuck) was going on and he wanted his country back -- from war and pillage and the destruction being wrought by the Rs in DC.
In working with the Dean campaign, I came to understand that he and most of those on his team were the political equivalent to Rockefeller Republicans of yore. They were not really "liberal Democrats" as they were presented by the media. But they were about as "liberal" as political personalities and players were allowed to get at the time. Yet they were, in essence, Republicans.
Whereas, at the time, the Busheviks were Radical Reactionaries. They were well beyond anything remotely "conservative." They were, in fact, Revolutionary Reactionaries, a seeming contradiction, and yet there it was.
This fact clued me to what had been happening in the political firmament of the Washington, DC, hothouse. Remember, at the time, I was also a Federal employee. Consequently, I had at least a partial view of what was happening on the inside of the Government bureaucracy as well as some inkling of what was going on among the electeds.
We like to think that 9/11 "changed everything" but it didn't, not really. The Change began much earlier; 9/11 merely speeded up what was already in process. The Change was to be the undermining of established democratic processes and their replacement with a) Chaos; and b) authoritarian control.
The initial application of Chaos to government was on display during the Gingrich "Revolution" -- which led directly to the Chaos of the Clinton Impeachment Theater. Good God.
But the Impeachment Spectacle was followed by the Election 2000 Judicial Coup, which installed a usurper on the Throne, and essentially put the kibosh on any more of this "democracy" nonsense. Unfortunate consequences ensued.
Pure Authoritarianism became the operating system of governance.
It was quite stark during the Bushevik era; it's not so stark now, but it may be more effectively implemented. The Republic, essentially, has been extinguished, replaced with an Imperial construction that is still in the process of being built but which is nearly complete.
The recent Unpleasantness in DC over the question of debt and control led by TeaBag fanatics -- but make no mistake, it was allowed by the Powers That Be -- was yet another means of discrediting the "democratic" processes by which the nation has traditionally been governed. It was another application of Chaos to the System of Rule that has fallen to pieces, deliberately subverted by a cohort of power players who won't be content until it is gone completely.
The spectacle has led to the conceptual extinction of the Republican Party. Not the Democrats this time. No. The Rs.
Oh. Well. That's a surprise.
But what's happened over the years since I first proposed the extinction of the Rs is that the Dems have taken on nearly all of the qualities that once characterized the Rs. Today's Dems are in essence Eisenhower Republicans, or even more "conservative." The Rs have practically no political function anymore -- except as nay-sayers and bomb-throwers, neither of which can be accommodated or afforded in today's complex world.
Now there is chatter about creating a "new conservative" party to replace the Rs, but in fact, the Ds have become the national "Conservative" party, and what's needed politically is a straightforward "Liberal" party, which no one in a position to do anything about it is even thinking about -- certainly not the so-called "left" blogosphere -- still obsessed as it is with the Rs and their message.
Given the fact that political parties have little more than an advisory role anyway, and that governance is carried on almost entirely via decree nowadays, I suppose it doesn't ultimately matter very much. But still... for some of us, there was a time when it did...
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