A new dawn, A blue dawn, a brave new dawn. And a little civil war on the side.

Robert A. Kezelis

History was made last night, and the whole world breathed a huge sigh of relief. African nations created new holidays, Europeans greeted America back to the Roll of Civilized Nations, and Asians were seen crying with joy. Russia's Pravda News called it the "welcome end of eight years of hell." You have to hand it to Pravda. They really have our number these days.
Here in the colonies, reactions were no less muted. 10,000 people got the idea that storming the White House to celebrate might be fun. Carrying Obama signs, chanting, singing, dancing, and hugging, they put a temporary scare in the nation's secret service.

To put things in perspective, 130,000,000 Americans voted in this election, with a black man earning 52% of that vote. No, that's not accurate. He's half black. But as newsies repeatedly try to hammer into our heads, "He's the most "librul" senator in office! He's worse than the socialist!" Oh dear! Black and Liberal, too?

Whether one considers himself a liberal, "librul," progressive, or like Senator Sanders, a socialist, for 16 years, people willing to describe themselves in those terms have been rare recently. In great part, that was a natural reaction to the GOP efforts to turn "liberal" and "progressive" into swear words. From Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, Tom DeLay, Frist, Sanitorium, to Palin and other ultra-conservative, deregulating, anti-law, anti-tax, war-loving jerks, Liberals were the enemy and had to be stamped out. In 2004, they claimed that they had succeeded. The "Democrat Party," they claimed, was dead.

My, how times have changed. The role reversal will be written about for a decade to come. Today's GOP has turned itself into a bigoted, small-minded, anti-science, anti-education, anti-regulation group of greedy bastards, concentrated in the most red parts of the south. In essence, today's GOP is now a mere regional party.

Even with the GOP in complete collapse and disarray, their spin continues. John Boehner, the failed House Minority leader, continued the drumbeat this way:

America remains a center-right country. Democrats should not make the mistake of viewing Tuesday's results as a repudiation of conservatism or a validation of big government. Neither should we. Instead of throwing in the towel, as our opponents demand, we must redouble our efforts to develop forward-looking solutions to the challenges Americans face - solutions rooted in the enduring principles of reform that define us as a party. We need to focus on winning the issues, one by one, and presenting principled, superior alternatives that reflect the center-right priorities of the American people, rather than the self-serving priorities of Washington.

Considering his audience, these words are no surprise. He wrote this to other congresscritters in a bid to maintain his Minority leadership position. And his selected audience may really believe that America is center-reich.

Except it is not.

Americans are upset. Tired. Frustrated. Angry. Uninsured. Suffering. Financially stressed. And they just saw their government, their pro-business, anti-consumer, pro-deregulation, government take an additional $700 BILLION in tax dollars and hand it over to the same greedy financiers who created their own mess. (AND paid themselves BILLIONS in faux profit-based bonuses. Let's not even touch the government teat sucking AIG maroons and their travel plans)

When every expert (who is not a paid political adviser for the GOP) agrees that more regulation is needed for the finance industry, when the greed and frauds perpetrated by pols and their favored donors are the norm, not the exception, and when every single promise made by tax-cutting, anti-regulation forces turned out to be a lie, it is not surprising to see a change in the nation's mood.

Center-right? America? No longer. Not when 52% of all voters elected for the most liberal senator in the country as their president.

I admit to having mixed emotions about the coming civil war, the one between the Ultra-neocon branch of the GOP and those Republicans who still have a functioning brain. Those emotions range from incredible elation to extreme joy, with tears of laughter providing some relief. Added to their self-destruction, watching them try to parrot their failed arguments and lies (economic, political, social) to the public looks even more pathetic and funny.

The longer they continue to maintain their fictional views of America, (center-reich? my ass) the further from mainstream America they go. In fact, I hope that they continue to make those failed arguments for another 4-6 years. By then the RNCC and RNSC might become clues in Trivial Pursuit as examples of self-defeating, failed organizations.

Today's GOP is unrecognizable. The party of Lincoln, of the EPA, Clean Water Act, Medicare, and more, has become the party of bigotry, intolerance, irrationally hating science, math, and education, and the party which welcomes into its home the most brain-dead, vile group of religious conservatives that have ever profited off gullible Americans. (Some studies have suggested that the level on mental illness and disease increase measurably, in proportion to the patients' self-reports on the strength of their religious feelings. Those studies help describe today's GOP.)

This war will be fun, although there is no telling just how bloody this one will become. But just like car wrecks on a highway, or huge building fires, such disasers in the making are just too interesting to pass up.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/