And let's not forget this one:
5. Thou Shalt Not refer to the Democrat Party as "Democratic", for "Democrat" is a curse and an insult, whereas "democratic" was set forth by the Founding Fathers (pbut) and we are striving for the days of real democracy when all voters were moneyed white men.
Sarcasm aside, the commandment that enabled the wholesale manipulation of the Republican party is the first, wherein they cannot allow themselves to agree or compromise on any issue with the Democrats. After that was implemented party-wide (with the help of the fourth commandment), the rest was simplicity itself. All the Democratic Party in general (and President Obama in particular) has had to do is to take common sense positions on most issues, and the GOP is forced by their own Five Commandments to take the opposite position no matter how ridiculous that position may be.
But wait, there's more! Because the Democratic Party is not so hidebound by dogma, they can take the ideas and positions of the Republican Party and make them their own, and the Republican Party is again forced to take the opposite position, even when the Democrats' position was theirs (the GOP's) to begin with! The individual mandate and cap-and-trade are shining examples of this. The concept's not new – it should be well familiar to anyone who remembers how Br'er Rabbit escaped from Br'er Fox, not to mention the confrontations between Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam. Talk about life imitating art!
So what's the way out of this mess for the Republican party? I think this article by Jonathan Chait sums it up pretty well:
What [an Obama victory in November] would mean for the GOP would differ wildly depending on which of the two current front-runners, along with the coalition that elevated him to the nomination, is blamed for the debacle. “If Romney is the nominee and he loses in November, I think we’ll see a resurgence of the charismatic populist right,” says Robert Alan Goldberg, a history professor at the University of Utah and author of a biography of Barry Goldwater. “Not only will [the grassroots wing] say that Romney led Republicans down the road to defeat, but that the whole type of conservatism he represents is doomed."
...
But if it’s Santorum who is the standard-bearer and then he suffers an epic loss, a different analogy will be apt: Goldwater in 1964. (And, given the degree of the challenges Santorum would face in attracting female voters, epic it might well be.) As Kearns Goodwin points out, the rejection of the Arizona senator’s ideology and policies led the GOP to turn back in 1968 to Nixon, “a much more moderate figure, despite the incredible corruption of his time in office.”
The fact that the GOP has gone so far to the right has resulted in the Democratic Party allowing the Republicans to essentially paint themselves into a corner with positions that no significant conservative politician of the Reagan era would ever have seriously considered. If Chait's contrarian logic holds true, the only way back to sanity for the Republican Party is to nominate Rick Santorum so they can suffer an almost-certain epic loss and begin the long, slow, painful process of rebuilding the Grand Old Party.
Article comments
1 - Dr Dreadful
Oxymora? What's an oxymor?
Anthropomorphic global warming? Our emissions are causing some people to attribute a human personality to the climate?
I hope it wasn't Clavos who edited this. Just the "Thou Shalt Not's" ought to have given him a conniption.
2 - Glenn Contrarian
Oxymora is the plural of oxymoron - I looked it up.
You're right that it should have been anthropogenic instead of -morphic. My mistake. You'll notice that
-morphic has been used a lot of times by different people including myself over the past months but no one said anything, but it's still cranial flatulence on my part.
But to the editor's credit, I did see a couple of edits that improved the readability of my article - most noticeably, the removal of most of my too-often-used italicization.
3 - Dr Dreadful
Glenn, the plural of oxymoron is oxymorons - your article is written in English, not Latin.
We're beyond the days when language scholars felt the compulsion to mangle the former to fit the grammar rules of the latter.
4 - Jordan Richardson
Doc, I was always certain that the plural of oxymoron could be oxymorons or oxymora. Every dictionary I've found seems to point to this as well, making no mention of the Latin except to point out the derivation of the Latin form from the original Greek.
I think it's acceptable as a plural, but it's certainly not common usage.
5 - Glenn Contrarian
Doc -
Oxymora. Jordan's right that it is not in common usage...but it is proper English.
Courtesy of The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
*sits back smugly, content that finally, after all these years, he's finally gotten one up on one of the editors*
6 - Dr Dreadful
*sits back smugly, content that finally, after all these years, he's finally gotten one up on one of the editors*
You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.
:-)
7 - Glenn Contrarian
You know, Doc, if someone said that to me in real life in just that way, chills would run down my spine and I'd think very seriously about moving overseas (again).
8 - Dr Dreadful
In case you didn't know, Glenn, that was the late, great Ian Richardson in the classic BBC political drama House of Cards in which he plays Francis Urquhart, a Conservative MP who embarks on a Machiavellian scheme to become prime minister.
Urquhart's creator, Michael Dobbs, is a Conservative political strategist, and House of Cards (and its two sequels) drew on his inside knowledge and experience of Westminster to terrific effect.
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Doc -
Thanks - I'm usually up-to-speed on most thins like that. My memory is famously faulty...but the way it does work, the next time I see the words "House of Cards", I remember it without fail. I'll see that drama someday.
10 - Dr Dreadful
Well worth a look, Glenn, if you like political dramas and if it's available on DVD in your region's format.
11 - teapartydad
Smaller government or less freedom, pick one.
12 - Dr Dreadful
Must we?
13 - Glenn Contrarian
The Founding Fathers already did when they got rid of the Articles of Confederation in 1789 and instead chose a strong Federal government instead with the Constitution.