...next week and take up health care reform legislation again in earnest. I still think Obama and the Democrats will pass a meaningful bill by Thanksgiving, but even if the Republicans are successful in thwarting it, they shouldn't be too quick with the high-fives. Because when the dust settles, theirs will still be a minority party led by the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. That's not a good place to be. In the New Republic this morning, Alan Wolfe describes the GOP as "nativist, anti-intellectual, small America, religiously zealous and hate-filled."
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/one-party-country
I still like Bill Maher's description:
"A small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers, and Civil War re-enactors, who mostly communicate by AM radio."
But seriously, in a recent paper published by the Pew Research Center in May called "Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2009: Independents Take Center Stage in Obama Era," the GOP, at 22%, has the "lowest level of professed affiliation...in at least a quarter of a century." Independents, on the other hand, are at a 70-year high, "owing to defections from the Republican Party...They continue to more closely parallel the views of Democrats rather than Republicans on the most divisive core beliefs on social values, religion, and national security."
http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/517.pdf
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