If the Republican party existed, it would be going after Van Jones’ scalp and the Obama health plan, rather than Glen Beck and Sarah Palin going after them. Glen Beck is not a party member. Sarah Palin holds no party office and is hated by the Republican party leadership with a hatred that verges on madness. The leadership of the Republican party, like the pretended movement in support of Obama’s health plan, is itself merely astroturf manufactured in Washington.
The Obama grass roots is astroturf. Acorn is a branch of the state. Acorn has offices and employees and is funded by highly regulated corporations reliant on regulatory favor and by direct government funding that is theoretically intended to house the poor. When I saw the video of Acorn offices shot by “Hannah Giles”, the undercover Christian activist pretending to be a prostitute and a conservative activist pretending to be a pimp interested in obtaining a government housing loan to set up a brothel full of under age illegal immigrants, I was struck by the similarity of the office atmosphere to the atmosphere of the government employment office and the government immigration and naturalization service – an the air of permanence, hierarchy and stable employment, quite different from the extemporization of a real political movement based on activism.
There is a Washington party, and an anti Washington coalition, and the Republican party is a minor constituent of the Washington party – and increasingly a minor constituent whose usefulness to Washington may well have ended, while the conservative movement is the major part of the anti Washington coalition.
The constitutional function of the Republican party is to be the legal channel by which non Cathedral influences are permitted enough participation in government to slow down progress. Increasingly, the Cathedral views that participation as an unbearable desecration, and in the 1988 election, did not permit a repetition of that desecration.
The Cathedral was humiliated and enraged, partly by the Bush tax cuts, and partly by his cowboy hat and fake cowboy dialect. And so, to prevent a repetition of this outrage and desecration, McCain was nominated Republican presidential candidate. McCain was foisted on the party by the party leadership, in part by gaming party rules, in part by stretching party rules beyond recognition, and in part by flat out breaking party rules. Foisting McCain on the party in clear violation of the will and rules of the party has caused something very much like a divorce between conservatives and the Washington establishment of which the party leadership is part.
If the desecration is once again permitted in future, the Republican party will survive, as a political arena rather than a party and cohesive entity. If from time to time movements get some seats in Washington, even if they are not quite qualified as members of the Cathedral, the party will continue. If the desecration is ended, and it looks to me that at the moment the Cathedral is just not in the mood for any more desecration, then soon no one will remember the Republican party, except perhaps as the bad guys who caused the great depression, fought for slavery in the civil war, and sabotaged communism causing the minor Ukraine crop failure, though a shadow called the Republican party will continue to formally participate in Washington rituals.