They eat their own...

maybe one day i'll remember to post here with regularity. lord knows, the people that know me know i'm never at a loss for words...

in watching this whole political drama we call "Decision '08" unfold, i'm caught off guard by just how splintered the Republicans are. i mean, it's been clear for awhile that they are a party divided by moderates vs. religious...um...loons, and a party turned upside-down by traditional Republican values no longer holding sway, such as being fiscally conservative, or local and states rights vs. federal rights.

but still, the level of division is astonishing to me. would you have EVER, in your wildest dreams (or nightmares, i suppose), imagined Ann Coulter, and patron skeleton...err, saint, of conservatives everywhere, saying she would vote for Hillary over McCain...now, granted, her rationale is that a Hillary presidency would be a 4 year disaster followed by 30 years of Republican rule, while a McCain presidency would be a 4 year disaster followed by 30 years of Democrat rule, so, for the long term, it kind of makes sense.

isn't that putting the cart before the horse, however? by most accounts, the Bill Clinton presidency was hardly a disaster. Yes, for the religious...um...loons, it was, and they took a blow job and turned it into sweeping victories in congress, and ultimately, a presidential selection for GW Bush.

As a result of all that, the loons took over the Republican party, destroyed it from within, lost congress barely a decade after taking control and seeming like they would hold it for eons, and have now caused the aforementioned splintering.

I'd like to think the American people have learned their lessons. We allowed a small minority to convince a near-majority that the true test of a leader was some sort of random morality test. And then, when that small minority was elected to public office, they proceeded to abuse their power, commit felonies of which they've since been convicted, approve of war crimes which they may well be convicted of one day, and basically trample all over the U.S. Constitution in the name of a War on Terror that we're fighting in a nation that wasn't even a threat to us until AFTER we attacked them unprovoked and opened the door for terrorism to take over that nation.

Anyway, it's truly fascinating watching what's happening in the Republican party. When the Democrats did this on a smaller scale in 2000, it cost them the presidency. But the large scale in which Republicans are turning on each other may not just cost them the presidency, it may cost them their party, and their party's relevancy.