Subject: Re: Attn. conservatives Message Body: nobody agrees with you anymore so get a life

More news about how the Republican party is responding to its big losses by thumping the same old tubs:

Rank-and-file Republicans remain, by all indications, staunchly conservative, and they appear to have no desire to moderate their views. GOP activists and operatives say they hear intense anger at the White House and at the party’s own leaders on familiar issues – taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.

There is little appetite for compromise on what many see as core issues, and the road to the presidential nomination lies – as always – through a series of states where the conservative base holds sway, and where the anger appears to be, if anything, particularly intense.

Rep. Steve King, an outspoken conservative who represents all of rock-ribbed western Iowa and may run for governor next year, said he had held 11 town hall meetings across the state since the early April state Supreme Court decision.

"Of those 11 meetings, 10 of them were full. Most of them were standing room. The marriage issue was the No. 1 issue on their minds. No. 2 was the massive federal spending taking place. In every discussion, immigration came up."...

Etc. etc.

Notice the three biggies here: taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Not terrorism, not abortion, not the deficit. What strikes me is that these are the three issues on which the Republicans are most out of step with the rest of America. Abortion has always been a good wedge for the GOP - after all, even liberals think abortion is sad and gross. Terrorism was a good one until the person responsible for protecting us became Barack Obama. And Americans are (rightly) scared of deficits, but the Republicans' track record of the last thirty years don't give them a leg to stand on.

So it's taxes, homosexuality, and immigration. Tax cuts are less popular than they've been for a long time; people aren't stupid, they know you can't cut taxes forever. They know that Bush's unprecedented tax cuts didn't do much for the economy. On homosexuality, America is becoming steadily more tolerant, a trend that almost certainly won't go into reverse (already, "civil unions" have clear majority support). And mainstream Americans (as well as American businesses) remain more welcoming to immigrants than any populace on the planet.

In other words, the Republicans have picked their biggest losers and stuck them right at the front of the parade. This is like a salesman who responds to every counteroffer by raising his price. Intransigence may make you look tough. It may scare the hell out of people for a while. But it isn't going to win you a majority. A decade or two in the wilderness will be democracy's reward for right-wing macho chest-thumping.