How Low Can the GOP go?

I am struggling to find the words to say here. Is this the Grand Old Party that I have grown up with? The Reagan-loving, Alex P. Keaton, Gordon Gecho, Cap Weinberger, Arthur Laffer party--the party of economic prosperity, traditional values, the "in-crowd" of your local high school. This is what the party has become? I am beyond amazement, I am into total depression.

I feel like I am in an early scene of King Lear, watching capitulation to a King who has not the mental capacity, nor the strength that he may think he has...

What is happening here? The Party, with 41 sitting senators, over 20 sitting State Governors, and close to 180 Congressmen and women have all taken a back seat to a hideous, obese, angry, divisive, gregarious mouthpiece, rather than speak for themselves? The Phil Gingrey apology to Rush was brutal enough, but now to watch the Governor Mark Sanford, and more hideously, RNC CHAIRMAN Michael Steele beg, scrape, and crawl on his belly back to Rush Limbaugh, to apologize, is just obscene.

The Democrats are delighting in this. Check out their website, with a mock letter of apology for anyone in the Republican Party who doesn't speak glowingly of the Great Rushmore.
http://www.dccc.org/content/sorry

Sadly, though, the GOP has gone from a party of ideas, of thinkers, of fiscal sanity and leadership, to a feckless bunch of second stringers, who are blatant and obedient followers (ditto-heads, to the uninitiated) of an ideology of dogmatic extreme allegiance to all things Conservative. Pro-choicers, pro-gun regulators, non-Christians (or faith followers), Euro-philes, Alternative Energy believers, Global Warming believers, Immigration reformists, fiscal pragmatists--all not need apply. Even if you are only ONE of those things, you are not ideologically pure enough for Rush, the leader of the Party. Michael Steele? Consider your efforts to broaden the appeal of the party ON HOLD INDEFINITELY. Charlie Crist? Arnold? Jodi Rell? Arlen Specter, Susan Collins? Dead to Conservatism.

At this rate, the Conservatives will rate somewhere near the Natural Law Party in terms of popularity. And the hypocrisy is starting to become blatant. A thrice married, ex-drug addict, fired from ESPN for racially insensitive remarks (because the ESPN sports channel is certainly part of the conspiracy, right?) blowhard is the only spokesperson for the party these days. The fact that the rest of the party would quake in fear of this guy should tell you something about the Rush followers.

And I have listened to this guy a lot over the years. I find his work increasingly boring, shrill, half informed, and well articulated. Isn't that Rushbo's issue with Obama?

The whole thing is pathetic. I can't take it anymore. I can't decide if I want this party to fail miserably, under Rush's tutelage, or succeed, and we will have to all bow to the round mound of intolerance. Either way, I am rooting for America to succeed. I don't really care if an ideology is hurt in the process. I can believe there is a minority of 20% of people who are "dittoheads" at heart, and really believe that they would rather see Conservatism succeed than America come back under Obama, and Democratic rule. But this notion that if they can only convince people, like Reagan did, to come back to Conservatism, everything would be great, is simply a misjudgement of the world around them. 24 years after the great Reagan landslide, things are different, the world has changed, and all that is truly left of the Reagan ideology is this bitter, angry shell of divisiveness, embodied by this grotesque hate and fear monger.

Republicans tie their future success to this guy, at their own peril.