A Lost Civilization

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/op...tion.html?_r=0

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 8, 2012 398 Comments

WASHINGTON

MY college roommates and I used to grocery shop and cook together. The only food we seemed to agree on was corn, so we ate a lot of corn.

My mom would periodically call to warn me in a dire tone, “Do you know why the Incas are extinct?”

Her maize hazing left me with a deeply ingrained fear of being part of a civilization that was obliviously engaging in behavior that would lead to its extinction.

Too bad the Republican Party didn’t have my mom to keep it on its toes. Then it might not have gone all Apocalypto on us — becoming the first civilization in modern history to spiral the way of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.

Just another vanishing tribe that fought the cultural and demographic tides of history.

Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it. The experts will sift through the ruins of the Reagan Presidential Library, Dick Cheney’s shotgun casings, Orca poll monitoring hieroglyphics, remnants of triumphal rants by Dick Morris on Fox News, faded photos of Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, and scraps of ancient tape in which a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashes his teeth about the 47 percent of moochers and the “gifts” they got.

Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

As the historian Will Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

President Obama’s victory margin is expanding, as more votes are counted. He didn’t just beat Romney; he’s still beating him. But another sign of the old guard’s denial came on Friday, a month after the election, when the Romney campaign ebulliently announced that it raised $85.9 million in the final weeks of the campaign, making its fund-raising effort “the most successful in Republican Party history.”

Why is the Romney campaign still boasting? You can’t celebrate at a funeral. Go away and learn how to crunch data on the Internet.

Outside the Republican walled kingdom of denial and delusion, everyone else could see that the once clever and ruthless party was behaving in an obtuse and outmoded way that spelled doom.

The G.O.P. put up a candidate that no one liked or understood and ran a campaign that no one liked or understood — a campaign animated by the idea that indolent, grasping serfs must be kept down, even if it meant creating barriers to letting them vote.

Although Stuart Stevens, the Romney strategist, now claims that Mitt “captured the imagination of millions” and ran “with a natural grace,” there was very little chance that the awkward gazillionaire was ever going to be president. Yet strangely, Republicans are still gobsmacked by their loss, grasping at straws like Sandy as an excuse.

Some G.O.P. House members continue to try to wrestle the president over the fiscal cliff. Romney wanders in a daze, his hair not perfectly gelled. And his campaign advisers continue to express astonishment that a disastrous campaign, convention and candidate, as well as a lack of familiarity with what Stevens dismissively calls “whiz-bang turnout technologies,” could possibly lead to defeat.

Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

Republicans know they’re in trouble when W. emerges as the moral voice of the party. The former president lectured the G.O.P. on Tuesday about being more “benevolent” toward immigrants.

As Eva Longoria supersedes Karl Rove as a power player, Republicans act as shellshocked as the Southern gentry overrun by Yankee carpetbaggers in “Gone with the Wind.” As the movie eulogized: “Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.”

Gun sales have burgeoned since the president’s re-election, with Black Friday weapons purchases setting records as the dead-enders rush to arm themselves.

But history will no doubt record that withering Republicans were finally wiped from the earth in 2016 when the relentless (and rested) Conquistadora Hillary marched in, General Bill on a horse behind her, and finished them off.

Them Damn Entitlement People.

I'm curious to see who will take their place.

A bit over dramatic, I think, but I get the general point that the author is making.

Yeah, a bit of literary/poetic license, but a lot of truth there too.

Hopefully the Republicans will do now what the Dems had to do in the '70's and '80's after they became a sclerotic party of the past, i.e., take some serious, clear-eyed self-reflection time and develop a forward looking ideology and ensuing policies rather than clutching to some mythical past glory days.

A healthy two-party system is good for America overall but the current Republican party is not up to that task at this point, offering little beyond obstruction, obfuscation and resentment. There are some signs among some of the younger and wiser members that is going on in some quarters, but also indication of denial, retrenchment and grasping for some past levers to political success. We'll see what forces win out.

Originally Posted by Rhumb

Yeah, a bit of literary/poetic license, but a lot of truth there too.

Hopefully the Republicans will do now what the Dems had to do in the '70's and '80's after they became a sclerotic party of the past, i.e., take some serious, clear-eyed self-reflection time and develop a forward looking ideology and ensuing policies rather than clutching to some mythical past glory days.

A healthy two-party system is good for America overall but the current Republican party is not up to that task at this point, offering little beyond obstruction, obfuscation and resentment. There are some signs among some of the younger and wiser members that is going on in some quarters, but also indication of denial, retrenchment and grasping for some past levers to political success. We'll see what forces win out.

My money's on the old guard. They'll be back in two years with a double dose of the same intimidation and fearmongering they've used for the past 12 years.

Originally Posted by Lair

My money's on the old guard. They'll be back in two years with a double dose of the same intimidation and fearmongering they've used for the past 12 years.

Yeah, the Dems do that well.

But you aren't seriously suggesting that there is any difference between the two parties do you ?

Anyhow, the author is suggesting that the Repubs have been run out of town and the Grand Old Party is in its last days. I guess the author failed to recall Romney had 47 percent and Obama had 53 percent. That is not an overwhelming majority.
Obama might want to be careful about what he says and does. He only needs to lose the confidence of 3.1 percent of his constituents to lose the office.

Originally Posted by evolved

A bit over dramatic, I think, but I get the general point that the author is making.

Google search the author's name and see why.

Originally Posted by Raymond42262

Yeah, the Dems do that well.

But you aren't seriously suggesting that there is any difference between the two parties do you ?

No (except for that #winning thing).

Originally Posted by Raymond42262

Yeah, the Dems do that well.

But you aren't seriously suggesting that there is any difference between the two parties do you ?

Anyhow, the author is suggesting that the Repubs have been run out of town and the Grand Old Party is in its last days. I guess the author failed to recall Romney had 47 percent and Obama had 53 percent. That is not an overwhelming majority.
Obama might want to be careful about what he says and does. He only needs to lose the confidence of 3.1 percent of his constituents to lose the office.

Obama isn't going to lose the office. By 2016 he won't be running anymore.

Originally Posted by Lair

No (except for that #winning thing).

aww look the cheerleader is keeping score. You must look so cute with your pom poms and pig tails riding around town with the top down.

GO SPORTS TEAM!!!

Originally Posted by Act of God

aww look the cheerleader is keeping score. You must look so cute with your pom poms and pig tails riding around town with the top down.

GO SPORTS TEAM!!!

Why do all you republicans fantasize about guys in womens' clothing?

(I know - you aren't a republican.)

Originally Posted by Lair

Why do all you republicans fantasize about guys in womens' clothing?

(I know - you aren't a republican.)

1. Is a cheerleader

2. Is not intelligent

3. Drives female car

Hey don't blame me, ma'am, I'm just connecting the dots. Are you tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick boom dynamite?

Keep thinking about me being a woman if that's what it takes to get your rocks.

I'm flattered. A little creeped out, but flattered.

OP do you hate white people?

Originally Posted by Fergo_the_mule

OP do you hate white people?

lol

Originally Posted by Fergo_the_mule

OP do you hate white people?

lol I think that answer is pretty clear, he's a flat out race-obsessed bigot.

Originally Posted by Lair

Keep thinking about me being a woman if that's what it takes to get your rocks.

I'm flattered. A little creeped out, but flattered.

Did your car come with a bow on it?

This same thing could have been, and was, written about the Democratic Party after the 2004 elections.

The GOP isn't going anywhere. There will be changes, but the entire party isn't going to be scrapped in favor of something new.

I hate Corn.