America no longer has a two-party system, argued Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman in a Friday post. That’s because the Republican party is essentially “defunct,” having been sucked into a “vortex of stupid” (i.e., taken over by right-wingers).
“The architects of this vortex,” wrote Longman, “are as varied as Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and Regent University jurisprudence, neoconservative foreign policy, the mighty right-wing media wurlitzer, the campaign finance laws, the lack of any accountability for anything ever, the things defending torture does to the human spirit and the brain, the folks who will pay any price to keep science from interfering with their bottom line, what happens when you have to lower your standards to make Ed Meese and Sarah Palin acceptable.”
From Longman’s post (bolding added):
The RNC struggled to control the [2012 primary] process from start to finish. When it was over, they were traumatized enough to make a determination that things would be different this time…
I’m not sure that it’s working out the way that they hoped it would.
…[T]here are reasons that there are a couple dozen contenders for the Republican nomination…
The most obvious is that the Bush/Cheney years were such an unmitigated fiasco that they left a black hole in their wake from which no leadership could emerge...
…What we got instead of leadership was a collective primal cry of pain and blame shifting that manifested itself in the modern Know-Nothing Tea Party Movement and Mitch McConnell’s strategy of maximal nihilistic opposition.
…That the Republican Establishment is back with another Bush tells you just how empty the legitimate well of talent had become…
…[Jeb is] quickly finding out that having more money than anyone else doesn’t really mean much anymore…
...[Jeb is] going to have to debate these bozos [and] jokers who have no pedigree whatsoever…
The RNC can’t do a thing about any of this…
The thing is, it’s not just the RNC that has no authority. For years now, we’ve seen that even Speaker of the House John Boehner has no juice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can’t do a thing with that august body. No one cares what Reince Priebus has to say…
It’s just a vortex of stupid that is devouring everything in its path. The architects of this vortex are as varied as Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and Regent University jurisprudence, neoconservative foreign policy, the mighty right-wing media wurlitzer, the campaign finance laws, the lack of any accountability for anything ever, the things defending torture does to the human spirit and the brain, the folks who will pay any price to keep science from interfering with their bottom line, what happens when you have to lower your standards to make Ed Meese and Sarah Palin acceptable…
There are so many architects. Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed and Bill Kristol and Lee Atwater and freaking Donald Segretti if you want to get down to it.
This is what happens when virtually every malevolent force in the country is allowed to pursue their path in an uncoordinated way, chipping, chipping, chipping away at the institutions of the country and the decency of everyday folks…
One of our two allowed political parties is defunct and yet somehow controls Congress and most of the states.
