What’s next for Republicans?

By ticorules on November 9, 2012 • ( 0 )

Yesterday I was talking to a good friend of mine and he was hopeful that with this electoral defeat, the Republicans would be people that he could respectfully disagree with, rather than cower in fear from. I didn’t think so at the time. But after mulling it over for a few days, it’s actually worse than I thought.

Bill Maher has this segment on his show called Dispatches from the Bubble where he shows how conservatives live in this hermetically sealed environment completely bereft of facts. Marjorie Dannenfelser , president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List is a prime example.

What we had, unfortunately, was a de facto truce on social issues,” she said. “A de facto truce on social issues on one side but a full embrace of the war on social issues on the other side.

So according to the Ms.Dannenfelser, Pro-life conservatives, have been in some odd détente state but its the Progressives who’ve been at war with them. Considering that there have been an epic number of abortion restrictions enacted in the last two years, I find that quite odd. Considering this graph on the left by the Guttmacher Institute, I find that simply amazing. But she wasn’t done yet.

Voters overwhelmingly disagree with the extreme positions on abortion taken by President Obama and the Democrats. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party, and their Super PAC allies never highlighted this vulnerability, despite the fact that our polling of likely swing voters revealed it to be a persuasive line of argument.

Let’s be charitable and leave it alone when myopic conservative maniacs spit fire about super PACs like that was somebody else’s idea. Only people living in the bubble can take a look at an 11 point gender gap between the President and Romney and think to themselves, we need to be even more retrograde on women’s health issues. That’ll be a winner. I’d argue that the only reason it was that close was because Romney started lying about his stated Republican-primary positions on women’s health. But she is far from the only one living in the bubble. Here’s Karl Rove, aka Bush’s Brain, on why President Obama won re-election:

He succeeded by suppressing the vote,” Rove said in an interview on Fox News with anchor Megyn Kelly on Thursday afternoon, “by saying to people, ‘You may not like who I am and I know you can’t bring yourself to vote for me, but I’m going to paint this other guy as simply a rich guy who only cares about himself.

Let all try to stifle our collective laughter at a man whose primary motivation as the leader of the conservative SuperPAC was to run negative ads against people. Problem number one is by his own bizarre definition of voter suppression, he is guilty of exactly what the President supposedly did. Here’s an interesting story about how Rove spread rumors about John McCain having an illegitimate black daughter back in the 2004 South Carolina primary. Problem number two is there was actual real voter suppression going on. Only it was the Republicans who were the bad actors.

If you’re not clicking the links above for the meat of the story (and if you don’t know this already, you should), here’s the gist: besides the proliferation of voter ID laws, The Ohio Secretary of State did everything in his power to reduce early voting. And Rick Scott, governor of Florida, refused to extend polls hours despite the fact that there were reports that people were waiting on-line for up to four hours.

So I don’t have a lot of faith that the Republicans will get their heads out of their collective asses. Not any time soon anyway. Remember just a few days ago, all the polls were lying and Romney was on his way to a historic victory. According to people like George Will, Peggy Noonan, Dick Morris, Karl Rove and other denizens of the bubble. Back in reality however, it was exactly the opposite.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.