The Republicans used to be a grand, or at least a “governing” old party. Agree or disagree with their policies, you could at least take them seriously. Not anymore.
Having fought off the radical John Birchers during the 1950s and survived Barry Goldwater’s disastrous presidential run in 1964, in which the far right candidate lost in an epic landslide to Lyndon Johnson, the GOP decided to let the radicals in the door after Barack Obama’s election in 2008. In fact, in the fever over health and financial reform, they let them take over the joint. As a result, the GOP is a shadow of its former self.
In fact, the Republican Party is today, for all intents and purposes, the Radical Party.
Republicans control the House of Representatives, but their speaker, John Boehner, cannot govern it. Under Boehner, the 112th Congress has passed fewer pieces of legislation than any Congress since 1947....
...On the state level, Republicans control 27 state legislatures to the Democrats’ 17, and they have full control of 24 states, including the governorships. They control key blue and swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
But outside of the deep South, their presence seems to have helped keep those states in Barack Obama’s column in 2012.
Whether it’s Virginia’s bizarre push to force women to undergo invasive ultrasounds in order to exercise their right to an abortion, or Michigan’s Orwellian law allowing for the seizure of local governments by unelected “managers,” or Ohio’s thwarted attempt to roll back labor organizing rights, Wisconsin style, or Florida and Ohio’s all-out push to halt early voting, “backlash” has the been the operative word for those living under Republican state rule.
Throw in Michigan’s lame-duck purge of not just union rights, but also abortion rights, and it is becoming axiomatic that to be governed by Republicans is to learn of their radicalism.
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