The Purging of the GOP.

Yesterday, as I was surfing "conservative" blogs for alternative perspectives, I found a comment that literally had me laughing out loud. It was in a column by Rick Moran entitled "Conservative Civil War well underway". In the article, Moran is congratulating "The American Thinker" (the blog where his writings appear) for realizing that the GOP is currently entering a major crisis. That in itself is mildly amusing, because the party's condition is obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of American politics. Still, Republicans obviously need something to feel "right" about during these trying days, and I suppose it displays a lack of generosity to kick these fellows while they are down. But the temptation is nonetheless strong.

The specific quote that had me rolling was," We will continue to follow this ideological struggle closely because we believe it to be the most important story of this young century." It's been quite clear that the conservative movement has been guilty of an astonishing amount of hubris over the last eight years, but this assertion was so over-the-top that I felt I had to work it into a post. I marked it's place in the virtual world by submitting a response- I thanked the author for the unintended humor of the statement, labeling it "an expression demonstrating the prism of extreme self-importance through which modern day 'conservatives' view themselves." Of course my gratitude went unacknowledged.

Not surprisingly, the malcontents frequenting the "American Thinker" are way too preoccupied with the perils of the coming election to spend much time striking out at outsiders. There are already plenty of desperate individuals translating their frustrations into personal attacks against whatever online entities they can fit into their perversely broad categorizations of "the enemy". To their credit, the habitués of "American Thinker" seem to have directed their attention toward their own house. Yet while the identity of the next president of the United States won't even be determined for a few more days, they are already picking over the remains of the GOP. Apparently recent developments haven't left them feeling optimistic.

Instead of trying to figure out why the majority of Americans have rejected the Republican party after two full administrations of misrule under George W. Bush and his Right-wing cronies in Congress, they have decided to criticize "conservative" figures who have abandoned the McCain/Palin ticket. Some of the harshest rhetoric is reserved for the likes of David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, and David Frum- a group one poster referred to as "quitters, whiners and cowards". The consensus (at least in this isolated corner of the Far Right) seems to be that it is time to excommunicate the RINOs (Republicans-In-Name-Only) and embrace the social conservatism espoused by the Fundamentalist Christian segment of the party.

Apparently Sarah Palin is acutely aware of the dissension within the ranks. She looks to be anxious to become the de facto leader (along with, perhaps, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal) of the next round in the decades-old "Culture War". If readers of "American Thinker" are in any way truly representative of the emerging core of the GOP, look for the party to cleanly remove all traces of an intellectual center from its body. It will be left to the true idealogues (Limbaugh, Hannity, Ann Coulter, James Dobson, et al.) that have been pushing for the most extreme platform to lead its flock. If Palin is (as some McCain insiders suggest) going "rogue" in the week before the election, then we can only imagine what her camp-followers are capable of in the coming years.