The GOP: The price of tribal betrayal

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis talks to Salon about the mindset that drives the Obama-era GOP
By Steve Kornacki

When Donald Trump hijacked the news this week with his latest birther ravings and Mitt Romney refused to repudiate him, Bob Inglis could only sigh.

“It really damages our credibility to not deal in facts,” the former South Carolina congressman told Salon. “The fact is the president is an American. The fact is the president is not a socialist. He’s left of center – he’s way left of me. But he’s not a socialist. There’s a difference.”

The prevailing theory is that Romney, who shared the stage with Trump at a fundraiser Tuesday night, bit his tongue for fear of offending a Republican base that contains more than a few voters who are sympathetic to Trump’s views. Inglis knows all about that kind of pressure: He may be the signature victim of the intraparty revolt that has defined the Obama-era Republican Party, a one-time rising star with a deeply conservative voting record who was nonetheless defeated in a 2010 primary – by 42 points.

Elected to his second stint in the House in 2004, Inglis irked some on the right by casting a symbolic vote against the 2007 Iraq troop surge and signing off on George W. Bush’s TARP plan. But if there was one single act that marked him as a traitor, it was his suggestion to attendees at a rowdy 2009 town hall meeting to “turn Glenn Beck off.” Boos filled the air, the video went viral, and Inglis spent the next year on the defensive. He finished 12 points behind challenger Trey Gowdy in the preliminary GOP vote, 39 to 27 percent, then gained almost no ground in the run-off, which he lost 71-29 percent.

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/01/the_price_of_tribal_betrayal/singleton/

[tanyev]

1. Today's GOP - No Sanity Allowed.

[malthaussen]

2. "It really damages our credibility to not deal in facts."

Am I the only one who finds this statement... surreal?

-- Mal

[sofa king]

3. "This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative."

Republicans have been dealing in lies since at least Richard Nixon, and only a Republican can believe otherwise, or claim that Democrats have been equally untrustworthy.

[malthaussen]

4. Ya think? Remember Johnson's "Credibility Gap?"

I'll grant you that the untrustworthiness is inequal. But sometimes I wouldn't want to live on the difference.

-- Mal

[sofa king]

5. Oh, I wouldn't want to live on the difference, either!

And I'll even go farther and suggest that the greatest danger to the Democratic Party right now is that the nation's budding sociopaths and narcissists may correctly deduce the swing of the political pendulum, and begin infiltrating the Democratic Party for personal gain just as they infiltrated and gained control of the Republicans.

That is why we will always need some version of the GOP. I believe successful democratic governments require a group which attracts the majority of evil people, lest they work their malevolence across the entire political spectrum.

[Tennessee Gal]

6. Punished for telling the truth.

That is the state of today's GOP.