Yet Another Sad Day for the GOP

So Speaker Boehner has thrown in the towel.  On a personal level, it is hard to blame him.  The Speaker of the House has a daunting job under the best of circumstances - and lord knows Mr. Boehner has not been Speaker under anything resembling the best of circumstances.  He has suffered far more personal abuse at the hands of his Republican colleagues than he has from Democrats in Congress or the Obama Administration.

Still, my natural sympathy for the man is tempered by the facts.  Speaker Boehner, like the rest of the Whim-Whams of the Republican Party, cheered the rise of the Tea Party extremists.  And Boehner like his Senate Majority Leader colleague, Senator McConnell, has done much to make obstructionism and partisan gamesmanship the norm.

This is not to say that there are not Democrats also culpable for gridlock.  There are plenty of them.

But it is the Republican Party that has truly upended the apple cart. The much courted  Republican "base" is now largely just a rabble of the old, angry and disgruntled of the caucasian persuasion.  They apparently fear EVERYONE- immigrants, young people, anyone of color, gays, uppity women, and now even the Pope.

The Republican Party as it was constituted for most of the 20th century is dead - but afraid to fall.

How much longer can this nonsense go on without a true realignment in our political establishment?
 
Hillary Clinton is a credible person to woo the moneyed elite of the Republican Party - many of whom have, no doubt, had just about enough of the Republican base's excesses.  Gay bashing, women bashing and hispanic bashing is profoundly bad for business these days.

The Clinton's are certainly capital friendly.  And aside from the moneyed, she could certainly make a credible appeal to the moderates of more modest means of the GOP if the party continues on its course of martyrdom.

On the other hand, Mr. Sander's early successes (he is dear to my heart if not my head) is making an early courtship of GOP moderates a sticky wicket for Clinton II.

Over the long term I cannot help but suspect the time is coming for the United States to have something other than our customary two party system.

Mr. Sanders is demonstrating there may now be a critical mass for a party on the democratic left that is truly "leftist."  I would join it immediately.

And the Republican base's Tea Party brand of populism may be viable as an independent party...at least for the moment... until it's angry and aging members die of natural causes or lose interest.

We live in interesting times.