OCMJ has this nailed. The GOP is by their actions is going into the territory of political suicide by only representing the viewpoint of a small extremist fringe even within their own party. Honest to God look at the extremist candidates. You have a fomer Alaska Governor who resigned her position leaving the State of Alaska in a total mess and with questions of using her office for personal gain. You have a religious extremist that graduated from Oral Roberts University who has made statements that no person with a supposed law degree from a legitimate and accepted school would accept. You have a Texas Governor who talks like he balanced his State Budget, but what he does not tell you is that he did it by simply cutting off all the City and County Governments forcing them to raise taxes and fees for services. It is true that he himself did not raise taxes, but because of him Texas is looking right now at unprecedented tax increases and I live in New Mexico within 100 miles of the Texas Border and have two El Paso television stations. Texas talks about taxes? Yep! Go to Texas and buy a $300,000 home. In California the property taxes on that home would be $3,750 plus city fees. In Canutillo Texas, a small town near El Paso that same home would cost you $10,000 per year! We have a fraud on this guy. Then there is the Pizza King. Yeah Right! I want to elect a man who proudly works as a CEO for a fast food emporium making one of the most unhealthy foods in the planet named after a leading organized crime figurehead. Then I get to look at his political record, except he doesn't have one. Then there is good 'ol Mit Romney. Romney is of the ultra conservative Mormon Faith, he is the Son of former Senator George Romney and has talked greatly about his Father's vast business sense. George Romney's business sense was well demonstrated and well documented. George Romney was CEO of a Company named American Motors. Remember American Motors?
I am a car buff, if you see the corporate decisions made by George Romney it is a miracle that AMC did not die long before it did. The only thing that AMC had that kept it going for many years was Jeep. AMC bought Jeep when Kaiser was floundering many decades ago. Chrysler Bought the tattered remains of AMC in the first years of the 1980's in order to get Jeep and dumped the rest.
In the past the GOP had statesmen. Ronald Reagan captured audiences with his convincing acting ability and his ability to convince the American people that the rich were a bunch of benevolent benefactors who if they gained even greater wealth and power were going to shower the American people with greater wealth and benefits for doing it. WOOPS! Sounded good, but it did not happen. Then there was our friend Richard Milhouse Nixon. Hey, I also attended Whittier College, and his records at Whittier were not as squeaky clean as they were painted. The man had his flaws. He had his good points, but the flaws were monumental.
The beginning of the destruction of the GOP started with the administration of Nixon. First there was V.P. Spiro Agnew who resigned in disgrace and was replaced by Gerald R. Ford. Ford was actually a pretty good guy, but his association with the impending doom of Nixon and his pardon of Nixons illegal transgressions ended his own political career. When Ronald Reagan took office you had Vice President George H.W. Bush as the V.P. The Reagan Presidency placed GHWB into the background because he was nothing more than a mealy mouthed bureaucrat who had at one time been head of the CIA. I will give that man at least one credit. He loved Christmas Shopping and would sneak out in a black Suburban and he did all of his own Christmas Holiday Shopping himself. I will give GHWB some credit as a human being. When GHWB was elected President the party stuck him with a total moron as Vice President and that was Danforth Quayle. Quayle in the eyes of anybody with common sense was an embarrassment to the doors of the White House. I do believe that GHWB would not have chosen Quayle as a running mate had he been gifted with the slightest concept of the man's ability not only to place his own foot in his mouth, but, his ability place the other one in there with it. GHWB like many of his party consistently screamed "no new taxes" and like many others within his party while it was a mantra they screamed it was not a reality they adhered to.
When within three weeks of a speech screaming no new taxes he signed and endorsed one of the largest sweeping tax increases in the history of the United States he effectively ended his own political career and gave the Presidency to the Democrats for the next eight years.
The Presidential Administration of George W. Bush is not a Presidency of which America can be proud in any manner. He was opinionated, arrogant, easily influenced by people playing to themselves and special interests and he was a man who had been bailed out of one scrape after another for most of his adult life. The GOP in GWB tried an experiment and it was a successful one with regards to one thing and that was the rewards of the wealthy and the stripping of everything from the poor and middle class. It was however not GWB who was the active one in doing this, it was instead Vice President Dick Cheney. GWB and his antics served as a cover for the brains and in this case the brains were in the head of the former head of Halliburton. The moment that this power came in numerous environmental laws went out the window and the damage done to the environment under "Fracking" which was a Cheney pet project may take decades to even start to compute.
There was a time I was loyal to the GOP, and I am not at this time a universal supporter of the Dems either.
The GOP is no longer representing the American People. They are representing business and industry at the expense of the American People. Taxation for the wealthiest ten percent of the American People is at one of the lowest levels in Unites States History while the poor and middle class are literally being taxed out of everything they own and the future of even their children is questionable. The religious right has ceased to be religion, church and helping mankind, it has simply become another corporation there for government handouts. The GOP, once a monument to fair play now functions totally on the "tabloid" mentality taking candidates away from issues and making it a mud slinging campaign covering the issues entirely.
One of the largest supporters of the GOP has been Rupert Murdoch and Fox News which has become one large 24-hour per day seven day per week infomercial. Rupert Murdoch does not support the GOP because of anything other than money. It is the GOP that makes Murdoch wealthier and wealthier. While the GOP takes high moral stands on thing trying to outlaw abortion, take away gay rights, criminalize gay sex, prevent and make birth control illegal by virtue of it's now extremist nature, multi-billion dollar supporter Murdoch is one of the largest producers of Pornography in the World and he, his son and Newscorp are at the beginning of long and lengthy investigations of criminal activity that has the potential to destroy Murdoch personally, Fox News and Newscorp completely.
If the Dems are smart (which would be a first there as well, they love masochism) they could literally bury the GOP for decades to come to the point that other parties would emerge and begin to balance things in a different way. Somehow if this were to happen I don't see offering the American people more choices and more ideas with regards to their elected representatives as being a bad thing.