Response to Losing the Republican Party

(See: Just Above Sunset: Losing the Republican Party)

I’m not sure I buy that "the party is over", but I’m still a bit confused by all these Republicans turning against Moore and saying he should drop out of the race.

I suppose it may be in part that they’re tired of being cast as the party that doesn’t believe women, but from the practical-politics point of view, it seems to make no sense: if Moore drops out, the likely outcome is that the Democratic candidate wins and the Republicans are down one more seat in the Senate. They have to realize that a “write-in” campaign will fail. You’d think the best thing for them would be to let Moore win, after which they can all demonstrate their purity by voting to expel him, at which point he would be replaced by a Republican appointed by Alabama's Republican governor.

But if the Republican party is dying, does this mean the Democrats will take over?

No, the simple reason being that, while everyone may be dismayed by all the incompetence and constant fumbles of the hapless Republicans, they still believe in “Republicanism" — or maybe more to the point, "anti-Democratism”.

To much of the nation, Democrats don’t believe in “personal responsibility”, illustrated by their constantly putting the “takers” (and yes, most of those, in their imagination, being “non-white”) into the position of living off someone else’s wealth. If it were ever proven conclusively that every male elected Republican official, when in their thirties, molested at least one fourteen-year-old, most of the electorate would consider it beside the point, the real point being that we would rather the country be governed by Republicans, even if they all be rascals and rogues, than Do-Gooder Democrats who keep insisting on turning the farm over to all those lazy bums.

I kept waiting for all the Republican phony bullshit to be exposed — the Benghazi's, the emails, and that incredibly stupid Uranium One thing — and for people to finally realize that Hillary Clinton was obviously the most qualified candidate. Sure, she was boring — certainly not a crowd pleaser like Trump, but he’s only charismatic because he’s a goofy dunce who’s able to grab the headlines every other day by contradicting something stupid he said two days before. Sooner of later, even those who voted for him would tire of his shenanigans and were certain to abandon him, wouldn’t they?

I even imagined a circumstance when Republican voters might come to their senses, and we might all actually have an honest debate over differing philosophies of governance — the conservative minimalist view of ever-smaller government and ever-lower taxes, where it’s every citizen for himself, versus the liberal view of a community that looks out for all its members, rich and poor, making sure all have opportunities to become productive contributors, and that those beyond hope at least don’t live out their lives in misery and die a lonely death.

Silly me.

The truth is, at least at this point in our history, just enough of us will never care how smart and competent Hillary Clinton was. The truth is, we didn’t want her to be our president, so we looked for excuses to not trust her, such as her doing something or other with her emails, and somehow seemingly let four Americans die in Benghazi, and maybe something or other about her giving away lots of American uranium to Russia, scandals that nobody can quite explain, but hey, you know, she seems to be surrounded by these "unanswered questions".

The truth is, we just can’t trust her to be president, because to do that, the Democrats would be running things, and we just can’t allow that, even if it means some colorful doofus is in the White House, pissing off the rest of the world, and getting absolutely nothing done.

But that’s okay, because other than getting a conservative on the Supreme Court — which we got! — there really is nothing more we really want government doing anyway, right?

So according to some, "the party is over"? What does that even mean?

Think about it: The Democrats, who seem to be smart enough to be in charge, are in fact just a bunch of smarty-pantses that nobody trusts, and the Republicans, seemingly feckless and dysfunctional and maybe of questionable morals, but in fact, are the party of “non-governance” and not-filling-political slots, now have their hands on the tiller and are steering the ship of state in circles.

Has it ever occurred to us that maybe this is exactly the way they want things to be?