As extreme right wing Republican U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota announced today that she was quitting the Congress, former mainstream Republican U.S. Senators Robert Dole and Olympia Snowe both told interviewers that the Republican Party has veered dangerously off course. While Bachmann could end up with a broadcasting platform on Fox “News” or elsewhere, Republicans would do well to ignore her and listen to Dole and Snowe instead.
On many issues, such as gun background checks and economic priorities, the Republican Party is out of touch with the majority of American voters. And the picture is getting worse for Republicans, as the number of voting age Hispanic and Latino Americans increases rapidly, women make up an increasingly powerful voting bloc, young Americans are turned off by Republican intolerance on gay marriage, global warming and other issues, and those staples of the the Republican Party, old white racist homophobic men, are dying off.
Meanwhile, the comments from former Senators Dole and Snowe, criticizing the extreme right wing that seems to run the GOP today, are not unusual. Make no mistake: the Republican Party is in all-out civil war, and the voters do not like what they see. Republicans can try to distract voters temporarily with fake “scandals,” but, as evidenced by President Barack Obama‘s consistent approval ratings, such distractions don’t fool the voters for very long.
With the 2014 Congressional elections and even the 2016 Presidential election not far off, Republicans are running out of time to decide whether they want to continue simply as the party of “no,” in which case that’s exactly what the majority of voters may say to them at the voting booth.
It’s important to remember that while she might be doing this to cash out, Palin-style, I think a bigger reason for this announcement happening may be the FBI investigating her presidential campaign. It might be a stretch, but it’s possible they found out that she did more than just screw over a couple staffers on their pay.
Thanks Robert, agreed! Haven’t checked but recollection is House ethics investigation part at least (not FBI part) dies if the House member leaves office. But in this case, the bigger issue is the GOP civil war, and whether the party will get its act together and become a partner in governing the country again, or whether its members will be content to just sit on the sidelines and toss crap.
Yeah. The schism is full effect here. The Tea Party (or what’s left of it) is clearly becoming toxic to the general Republican leadership. Nobody hates the Tea Party more than House cat herder John Boehner. And as crazy as Bachmann has been, her constituents are just as bad. We can’t forget that — a couple million or so people willingly voted for the woman. That’s one of the big problems facing the party going forward. They’re slowly shedding the crazies, but they still have the people that put them in congress in the first place….