For They Have Sown the Wind...

Politics is full of irony

The Republican Party has been, since the genesis and implementation of the "Southern Strategy" under Richard Nixon, an unholy alliance of the affluent and the Anglo Saxon lower middle class.  The Republican wealthy have paid lip service to the fears and desires of their less well-heeled brethren in the arena of the culture wars so long as the Congressional party and Republican Presidents were allowed to go about the business of systematically picking-the-pockets of the middle class.  It was a fools' bargain on the part of middle class social conservatives; but their self-appointed leaders - clerics, out-of-work or wannabe politicos, and the welter of "conservative" non-governmental agencies like the Family Research Council - found the alliance very lucrative both politically and financially.

And in 2010 the alliance seemed to reach new heights with the Tea Party surge in Congress and, arguably more importantly, with gains in state legislatures and governorships.

At the state level newly empowered Republican majorities and super-majorities gleefully went about gerrymandering election districts to perpetuate their legislative majorities and maximize their Congressional seats.  They did so with remarkable success.

Today, your average Republican Congressman has little to fear from a Democratic challenger in his or her solid Republican district.

And on the national level GOP Presidential primaries made it clear that moderation in the pursuit of anything was no virtue.

Then came the 2012 election results - and those pesky inconvenient demographic truths - that promise to only get worse from the GOP perspective and which became so obvious that even FOX News has found them impossible to ignore.  In the aftermath, many wealthy Republican contributors looked at the numbers and after days given over to prayer and meditation they sayeth:  "Oh Shit! What hath we wrought?" 

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

Hosea 8:7

Indeed, the bud yielded whack-jobs who could not win elections and the Democrats were perfectly willing to swallow-up Senate seats that should have, in any reasonable circumstance, gone or remained Republican.

And the Republican Speaker of the House is saddled with a majority of his own caucus that he is unable to lead and that is unwilling to follow or get the hell out of the way.

Enter (again) Mr. Karl Rove.  How about a super PAC, funded by the anonymous uber-wealthy, designed to pre-select "electable" Republicans and give the bum's rush to those who fail to recognize the supremacy of the monied or who want to talk about rape, abortion, gay marriage and all that nonsense?

Not so fast say the Tea Party types!

Of course every state and every state GOP organization will resolve these contradictions in their own inimitable fashion.  In Alaska it didn't take long.  Last fall, Paulista's (remember Ron Paul) elected one of their own as the state party chairperson.  He was unceremoniously deposed last week by the party politburo via machinations that would have made any banana republic proud. The state party's funds were transferred to the Juneau Republican precinct for "safekeeping". 

This dubious coup (or was it a counter-coup) was poorly covered by our local media.  And small wonder.  Few of the Republicans in the state legislature give a fig.  A majority of the Republican legislative majority long ago signed-up with Big Oil.  And Big Oil couldn't care less about rape, abortion, gay rights or any Paulista notion of "liberty".   Big Oil just wants the money.

Ain't life grand?  Stay tuned...