Anonymous Liberal, talking sense as usual:
The GOP's problem is twofold. First, we just concluded a period of history in which the GOP ran everything. And they did it really badly. They were corrupt and incompetent. They led us into an unnecessary and costly war; they got themselves embroiled in an endless string of scandals; and they presided over an epic economic collapse. People remember all those things very vividly and it has badly damaged the Republican brand.The Republicans will never take power again until the Democrats screw up so badly that they're the only alternative. I predict that'll happen, at the earliest, about halfway through Obama's second term.But that's only half of the GOP's problem. The reason the Republican Party continues to bleed members has much more to do with the general attitude of the party's political and intellectual leaders than anything else. Rather than admit to any mistakes or take even the slightest bit of responsibility for the state of the country, they insist on blaming everyone but themselves. Rather than working with a popular new President, they insist on opposing his every move, attacking him relentlessly, and blaming him for problems that even the most clueless voters know aren't his fault. People may not follow the ins and outs of policy debates, but they can tell when one side is being unreasonable. They watch TV and they see a very intelligent, charismatic President who says a lot of very reasonable sounding things and exudes competence. And then they see a bunch of angry conservatives and Republicans who insist that that same man is some sort of evil communist who's going to destroy the country.
In other words, the problem is not the ideas, but the attitude. Republicans are coming across as a bunch of obnoxious, unreasonable a-holes.
I predict that'll happen, at the earliest, about halfway through Obama's second term.
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