Good bye, Republicans

With the way things are going — the shifting demographics, the shifting political attitude — it will take at least a generation to rebuild a worthwhile and relevant Republican party.

The McCain campaign got the formula wrong this election year. A campaign driven by the incendiary culture-war rhetoric of skirmishes past, did not work this time around.

2008, it turns out, is an election year for fundamental change, major national renovation, major soul surgery that Republicans could not equal.

The theme “Country First” designed to appeal to the base but also to the heightened patriotism of everyone else was eroded by the stupid attention to a nuclear strategy of negation, instead of a strategy of rebuilding, i.e., exploiting opportunities to attack Sen. Obama’s character, instead of articulating an alternative revolutionary-level change in America.

McCain’s failed campaign is an indication of how morally and intellectually bankrupt the Republican party has become. Intellect has been so driven out of the party — because it is somehow elitist to think deeply — that its single remaining pulse has flat-lined. Morally and intellectually speaking, the GOP is more broke, more destitute than the frozen friggin’ country of Iceland!

I can’t name a Republican who I can admire for his/her intellect and credibility on any issue; but I can think of many who I’d hang out with for beer and gossip at a sports event or a church retreat. The conservative intellectual bench, so to speak, is shallow, indeed.

The deference to Rove and his intellectually lazy, divisive and exploitive brand of politics is over. And in the words of Hillary Clinton, “Make no mistake, we will again rise from the ashes of the Bushes!”