Kudos

Congratulations to Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michael Steele, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and most of all Richard Bruce Cheney:

The decline in Republican Party affiliation among Americans in recent years is well documented, but a Gallup analysis now shows that this movement away from the GOP has occurred among nearly every major demographic subgroup. Since the first year of George W. Bush's presidency in 2001, the Republican Party has maintained its support only among frequent churchgoers, with conservatives and senior citizens showing minimal decline...

...The losses are substantial among college graduates, which have shown a decline in GOP support of 10 points. (The losses are even greater -- 13 points -- among the subset of college graduates with postgraduate educations.) This may reflect in part Barack Obama's strong appeal to educated voters, a major component of his winning coalitions in both the Democratic primaries and the general election...

Stephen L. Taylor analyzes the problem hardcore Republicans are having with reality, as they claim the party is in trouble because it has somehow not stayed 100% pure and true to its base:

There are two rather major problems with his “analysis.”

First, the party isn’t losing its base, it is losing everything else.

Second, the Rove strategy, especially in 2004, was a base mobilization strategy, not a treat the base like doormats strategy. Indeed, the Bush/Rove years were not exactly exemplified by the GOP going out and forming a party based on what McCain would call RINOs–indeed, it was just the opposite.

As Daniel Larison rightly notes:

The Gallup findings are interesting, because they show that conservatives are among the least likely to have stopped identifying themselves as Republicans, yet they remain convinced that pursuing an agenda geared towards appealing to them (and only to them) is the means to win back all the other people who have drifted away since ‘01.

It is a odd bit of reasoning that Larison describes, but it does seem to be the dominant mode of thinking within certain Republican circles these day.

The least-touted story on Fox News has to be Obama naming Gov. Mike Huntsman, a loyal but non-ideological Republican, as Ambassador to China. Huntsman was seen by Dems as the only guy in the GOP farm system with real potential for Presidential stature, and he may one day move into the Oval Office, if his party calms down (or if he switches) just as George H.W. Bush was Ambassador to China before ascending to the Office. But in some ways it's a much bigger deal than Arlen Specter, a huge coup for Obama.

Huntsman's political strategist, John Weaver says:

"If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. "That's just the truth."

So, kudos, I say, because I believe what ails the Republican party should not infect the rest of the country, especially as we try to recover from this last infection.

Stay pure, Republican Party. Keep hunting down those heretics, as the President converts another and another.

Keep up the good work.