Paul Krugman: The Republican Death Spiral

NYT's Paul Krugman on what the Republican Party might be after tomorrow's massive defeat.

"You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots."

Republican moderates may not have a home anymore under the GOP little tent. The result, Krugman noted, is the acceleration of the Republican Party's "long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries."

And how do we know? The full blown denial is there. A recent Democracy Corps poll found that Republicans, by a margin of more than two to one, believe that Mr. McCain is losing “because the mainstream media is biased” rather than “because Americans are tired of George Bush.”

8 years of Bush has been rough on all of us, hopefully this is the end of the Red State Blue State "divide and conquer" politics. Optimism is mine, I think once you remove the distracting divisive disease of Bush, the country will grow healthy again.

At first it will be hard for the Bushies:

"This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance."

We are moving forward, no more looking back in the rearview mirror on culture wars. Obama has changed that forever.

Source: Paul Krugman