The Conservative Crisis 2:26 PM (16 minutes ago)

from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Today's Republican implosion is not sudden. And its roots were diagnosed a long time ago - by yours truly in 1998 in the New York Times Magazine, and in this superb article at the same time in the Atlantic by Christopher Caldwell, now of the Weekly Standard. Money quote:

The Republicans are too conservative: their deference to their southern base is persuading much of the country that their vision is a sour and crabbed one. But they're too liberal, too, as their all-out retreat from shrinking the government indicates. At the same time, the Republicans have passed none of the reforms that ingratiated the party with the "radical middle." The Republicans' biggest problem is not their ideology but their lack of one. Stigmatized as rightists, behaving like leftists, and ultimately standing for nothing, they're in the worst of all possible worlds.

Anyone to whom this is now news has been asleep for the past decade, and in a coma for the Bush-Cheney administration.

numerous posts re this -on asllvn & pointing to elsewhere 'Conservative Crisis', 'Republican Implosion', ~dying of the GOP.
-on hoffmania 'Death Throes' w links re McCain, Palin, Kristol, the Corner at NRO (& weeklystandard seems be other representative of hard right)...
& asllvn 'Assisted Suicide of the Amer Right', w NRO & Instapundit (glenn reynolds) re the mugging hoax (McCain campaign staffer claimed mugged by black man who carved a B for Barack into her cheek)
am not consistent in collecting these ~variously tagged conservatism, party politics, punditry. if want to overview, will have to look thr these three tags, collect here I suppose.

What Policing Dissent Leads To 11:52 AM (1 hour ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Peter Suderman has a very sharp post [culture11] on the GOP's acute malaise:

Why hold your tongue when the party nominates a lackluster candidate? This tendency is no small part of what allows a problematic candidate like Palin to be nominated. ...Eventually, you reach the situation we may be in now: An incoherent and out of date set of ideas, an unappealing party, no trustworthy leaders, and few electable candidates.

(Hat tip: Larison)

"A Bloody Struggle Over Palinism" Oct 24, 2008 (3 days ago)

from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Packer is transfixed [End of an Era -- George Packer: Interesting Times (Online Only)The New Yorker ] by "the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America":

Like Democrats running against Herbert Hoover well into the 1970s, the Republican campaign still thinks it’s 1980. But it turns out that in 2008 voters can actually imagine worse things than tax rates on upper incomes returning to their Clinton-era level.[...]

The Republican Party’s immediate post-election future will be a bloody struggle over Palinism. It’s already started at National Review online, where the growing hysteria of the posts signals that the roof is falling in on conservatism. Everything that worked for forty years has suddenly not just stopped working, it has become self-defeating. Republican candidates, strategists, and pundits are like witchdoctors who keep repeating the old incantations over and over, their voices rising in furious shock, to no effect. That’s the sound of an era ending.

We've Sprung A Leak Oct 22, 2008 (5 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Larison on [Eunomia » Abandoning Ship -amconmag.com-larison-2008-10-22-abandoning-ship] the sinking GOP:

In the end, the selection of Palin was not only a desperate and cynical move designed mainly to mobilize core constituencies, but her candidacy quickly turned into nothing more than a vehicle for riling up the remaining true believers who still approve of Mr. Bush’s job performance. If recognizing this obvious truth makes one a “me-too” conservative, you’re going to find a lot of people clamoring to acquire that designation.

Obama endorsers are a somewhat different story, as they are trying to jump on the popular bandwagon, but rather than wailing about the perfidy of the defectors and demanding to know what side people are on one might want to consider what it is about one’s own side that seems to have become so radioactive. It’s all very well to say that the critics and defectors are rats deserting a sinking ship, but instead of worrying about that one might spend a bit more time considering how the ship came to be in this situation. When in an imploding political system or an imploding political movement, it is usually more important to change conditions inside to keep people from fleeing than to wish them all good riddance while building higher walls.

No Party For Independents Oct 21, 2008 (6 days ago)
from The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan by Andrew Sullivan

Larry Gellman is tired of the GOP:

This latest descent completes the utter destruction of the Republican party as a force for good in this country. Until eight years ago, Republicans had a deserved reputation for being more socially and fiscally conservative and responsible. When the party culture became infected with the Bush/Rove/Cheney virus, it began to morph into a divisive force that possessed none of those qualities.

Now the mass exodus is underway. Anyone who is fiscally conservative can't call himself a Republican anymore. Anyone who is a religious Christian can't honestly be part of this since Jesus preached about caring for the sick and the poor--not about eliminating reproductive choice or issues related to same-sex marriage. There's nothing Christian about the agenda of the Religious Right--it's a totally political movement focused on issues that Jesus never mentioned and they ignore the issues about which Jesus preached constantly. Anyone who believes in honesty or competence in government wouldn't call themselves a Republican after Bush. And now, no one who is not a committed soldier in the Holy War against the Left is welcome either.