March 07, 2012 News & Views » Opinion

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Today's GOP is off the deep end 

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GOP is off the deep end

Joeff Davis/CL File

GOP is off the deep end

The question used to be, "What's the matter with Kansas?" The question now is, "What's the matter with the GOP?"

The two questions are related, of course. Kansas and a number of other states with less educated, less affluent, less urban populations — Georgia included — have swung hard to the political right over the past couple of decades as Republicans successfully exploited cultural divisions over such issues as gay marriage, abortion, the Ten Commandments, and even science. But, after years of driving wedges through the American populace and purging its own ranks of moderates and pragmatists, the GOP has created a base of voters so extremist and fringe-y that the party can't hope to nominate an electable presidential candidate this fall.

As this is being written, we don't know the results of the Super Tuesday voting, but it hardly matters. The fact that Rick Santorum — a candidate whose radically conservative views on women, gays, and the division of church and state are not so different from those of, say, the Taliban — could get this far should be a wake-up call to mainstream Republicans, if there are any left.

To win a GOP primary these days, it seems you need to be one of two things: a true-believer cultural extremist like Santorum or someone willing to say whatever it takes to trick primary voters into thinking you're a cultural extremist, as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have attempted to do. (Ron Paul doesn't count because he's not really a Republican but a Libertarian.)

But, national electability aside, the GOP has produced a generation of politicians so focused on ideological purity and so resistant to the notion of compromise that many of them have little actual interest in governing — just look at the gridlock in the Republican-controlled U.S. House.

The same is certainly true in Georgia, where Republican state lawmakers last week voted overwhelmingly in favor of an abortion bill seemingly intended to force women to give birth to babies that are unlikely to survive or lead normal lives. Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, called the measure "the most important bill we'll consider this session" — more important, apparently, than creating jobs, improving transportation, or bettering public education.

Another GOP-backed bill, now before the Senate at this writing, would bar students without immigration documents from attending public colleges. Like the abortion bill, it's another measure that would impact a relative handful of people; the University System of Georgia estimates there might be about 300 undocumented students among a total statewide enrollment of more than 300,000.

Georgia's school test scores and employment numbers are near the bottom of the barrel, but our majority party continues to focus its attention on finding the next cultural wedge to hammer.

As Bruce Bartlett, a longtime GOP operative and Reagan economic adviser, recently confided to Jon Stewart: "Frankly, one of our political parties is insane and I think we all know which one it is." C

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