At some point between WWIII and WWIV is my prediction.

Not in my lifetime.

People like Hegel think they can use the radicalism for elections, then put it back in the box after they re-take control of Congress. They will be surprised.

"I hear this sentiment from time to time, usually from sane, mainstream Republicans who aren't thrilled with the hysterical right-wing takeover of their party..."

Both of them?

The nonsense will last as long as they keep winning elections with it. And they'll keep winning election as long as "sensible" people like Hagel stick with them in spite of the nonsense.

Boehner, McConnell and the rest must laugh hysterically when Hagel, Snowe and the rest of the furrowed-brow crowd says things like this. "Just keep the endorsements, checks and votes coming, folks. Yes, obviously some of the statements by our more radical members are a bit out of line, and trouble us all. But don't let that torture your pretty little mind. Just keep the endorsements, checks and votes, coming. Thank you very much."

What always interested me about people like Hagel is how completely they block out the fact there there currently -is- a major party quite similar to the party they long for.

It's like saying that I want to get to London next week, but instead of catching a flight to Paris, I'll wait until the Topeka-London tunnel is finished.

The Four Horsemen of the GOP Apocalypse

"The Republican Party will find a new center of gravity," Hagel predicted. "I think they'll let this nonsense play out. It's like a bad storm -- it just has to go through.

Death by Global Warming Denial
Fed Famine
Media Pestilence
And the end of the bad storm: Conquest by Impeachment...

So when can we anticipate this return to maturity?

When.
Hell.
Freezes.
Over.

If nothing else, the fact that the Republican Party has still not released its policy platform for the midterms is deeply disturbing. The party of no is running entirely as the anti-Democrat party:
Voter - "What are you going to do if you win?"
GOP Candidate - "Ummm... not be a Democrat!"

Paul Ryan made a start, but candidate's refuse to acknowledge it for fear of turning off voters - with good reason.

As long as the hate radio and Fox News continues to egg on the crazies it will continue.

Americans are the dumbest people on the planet.

I don't see it changing.

"So when can we anticipate this return to maturity?"

When they fail to take back either the house or the senate because their candidates were seen as too extreme. If Republicans won't say what they will do if elected, then it's up to Dems, (and us) to do it for them. The ads should have their own words coming out of their own mouths without editing. There should be people following all of these candidates to every event so that people know exactly what they are voting for before the election.

I'm having a hard time believing the American people are so short sighted that they are ready to hand the key back over to the same people who caused this mess to begin with. It just doesn't make any sense.

The Republican Party is crazy and getting crazier. At what point does it decide to stop being crazy? How does that work? Does inertia suddenly seize up? What thermodynamic principle would explain that? We're at the point, having unleashed The Crazy, that Republicans simply have to follow it through to some crashing resolution. Let's hope that resolution is an electoral catastrophe and not civil war. Still, we're well past the point of no return. Sanity if it comes will be imposed from without.

@atliberal: That's exactly what I said in my comment on the previous post.

But like I said, try to imagine that Republicans are saying the exact same thing about Democrats!

As Steve has proven repeatedly, how do you have a rational discussion with someone when you can't even agree on the same reality.

I'm sure the current "bad storm" of extremism and pure political opportunism at the cost of good governance will blow through, just like that last one, when Newt Gingrich and his cohort took over the party, shut down the government, abandoned the idea of compromise to achieve their goals, lied with impunity, and impeached a President for political purposes.

We all remember when the GOP 'got through' that one, right?

Oh. Yeah. Never.

If the Rethugs take over one or both houses of Congress this fall they'll see it as a vindication of their extremism, and go for more of it.

If the Rethugs have a bad year at the polls they'll see it as the reason to become more extreme yet.

Cut to the chase. The lunatics own the party, they aren't going to give up without a fight within the so-called party, which would inevitably split and then lose elections some more.

I agree that this insanity has to play out, but what will we have when it does?

Kiweagle,

I think the time for rational discussion with the 26% of the public who are not even willing to look at facts has long passed. But for the rest, the reasonable "middle", the people who tune this stuff out until right before the election, there is still time to have a rational discussion, and offer a real choice. The truth is on our side. We have to get it out there over the din of right wing talking points and flat out lies.

The Republican Party as we know it is dead. Maybe some other coalition will form to represent center/right thinking but not in the near term and not one that counts on the Tea Party Conservative Movement as its core.

The radical right is far too rejectionist to take part in normal democratic party politics which demands moderation and compromise. Tom DeLay is a perfect spokesman for this wing, and in his farewell address to Congress equated compromise with "preening self-styled statesmen."

The radical right has been a part of GOP politics since at least the end of WWII, but has never been this empowered, not even when it nomiated Goldwater in 1964.

Fox News and conservative media are what fuel the radical right and are its real leaders. And so long as those media giants have a political and financial interest in sustaining far right hysteria against both Democrats and the democratic political system itself (hence Beck's a plague on both your houses attacks on Dems and the GOP equally) they will continue to be a rallying point for rebellion.

Establishment Republicans who want to win elections so as to put together a sutainable governing coalition will have to look elsewhere than today's white, Christian and Southern populist base as a foundation to build upon.

I always like Chuck. We now have an electorate that is filled with grumpy, low-information-facilitated piss and vinegar and mostly uninterested in a civil, well-functioning, middle-class-friendly society.

But despite my sympathy for Hagel's wishes the GOP should tell us what they want to do, the sad and bitter truth is: they already have. We know what kind of taxes they want, we know they'll use investigations and connivance to project and keep power, destroy social programs and even long-term legacy "third-rails" (not in today's wretched climate) like Social Security, and so on.

And this must be stopped. First of all Obama isn't running this year, and second if the cynics stay home you will have enabled turning this grand nation into a third-world hellhole for the majority.

I agree that this will eventually pass, but it'll take a few years. They'll have some successes this year in districts where extremism plays, but in 2012 they'll nominate a lunatic who can't possibly hope to win nationally in the name of "purity." After that trouncing, they'll start to move back to some sense of normality, and by 2016 I expect the worst of this will have passed. Al Giordano compared it to 1964, when Barry Goldwater carried about five states. I'm seeing a good bit of presentism in this thread, as though this has never happened before. Maybe no major party as gotten this extreme before (at least since the Civil War), but that doesn't mean it's a permanent restructuring of the landscape. The parties will reach a new equilibrium, eventually. The shame is this would be the perfect time for a new, credible third party to emerge, but I don't see that happening (at most, the Tea Party spawns a new party, which will embarrass itself for a few years and then burn out).

The Whashington who?

Has anyone else noticed that whenever a BPublican with a conscience decides to criticize the party, the find the most obscure media source they can?

"In a scathing rebuke to his party Chuck Hagel has a blistering Op-Ed in the DC Chronicle."

I guess MTP really need another John McCainm show and had no room for a washed up former Senator.

The question is not IF the GOP will come back to its senses. They either will - and will survive. Or not - and thus will eventually be gone and substituted by a new party.

The question is: how deep will America be hurt by then? How many lost years will be added to the eight years under GWB? How much damage will be done to the infrastructure, the people, the economy, and the standing of the USA in the world?

And who stops the media from playing along with batshit-crazyness to satisfy the short-term goals of their stake-holders?

Or, shorter: what will be left of America AFTER the GOP (or its substitute) has come back to its senses?

The return to sanity will come after a few more Tea Party favorites decide to up and quit under a cloud of scandal in the middle of their elected terms.

Every triumph carries the seed of its own destruction.

Maturity or Majority ...

Come back when you can say"Vidi Vici Veni" , without some nitpicking nag .
Now that'l tell you a little bit about a little something .
Oh yeah and Correct This , until you whip it .

If Republican fear mongering , hate bait radio , and the know nothing propaganda media outlets prevail against America , the Triumphalism of the Ulster Protestants will appear congenial in comparison .

The thing I worry about the most with the apparent extreme move to the right by the Repug party in the times we are living in is the thought about what happened in Germany in the years between WW1 and WW2 when economic problems were rampant throughout the world (as they are now) and the extreme right (Nazi party) took power. I mean it seems to me that this whole scenario that we are living thru now could lead to a similar scenario (as in Nazi Germany) occurring in this country. The similarities are all there. Any comments?

Hagel's cavalier dismissal of the fascists who have taken over his party is deeply disturbing. This isn't a matter of "this too shall pass" because we have the mode of how it plays outl in the Weimar Republic of Germany after WW I.

The national psychosis Germany entered beginning in the 1920s didn't 'play out' until 1945, and if that is how our emerging and escalating psychosis has to be played out then global climate change and worldwide environmental degradation are nothing in comparison to what is to come.

It took the U.S., Britain, France, and Russia to end Germany's self-destructive barbaric atrocity, and one has to wonder, as the lunatics of the right ascend to power, who or what will end our likely excursion to the dark side.

Severe atmospheric disturbances like hurricanes play out in roughly a week. Similar disturbances in the ocean require months at least. But political upheavals, such as we are now facing, take decades. Where Hagel is coming from is some unrealistic la-la land of the eternally naive and optimistic. Many of us will not live to see the end of the coming episode, and neither is he.

It's very difficult to reestablish one's self late in life, and in these circumstances it's even harder to know where to go to dodge the nuclear exchange that may well happen when the lunatics really take over.

In my lifetime there have been some Republicans whom I have liked or at least didn't think were the devil incarnate. Chuck Hagel is one of those but I fear he isn't really facing reality. The new Republican Party would never have accepted Reagan or Nixon if they were to run today. Actually most of the old Republicans wouldn't be acceptable to this group of extremists.

Dont ask when, ask who. Where in the loyal GOP infrastructure are the policy people? It's understandable that Karl Rove types occasionally end up at the helm and that politics wins over policy. And it's understandable that policy wonks who disagree with the resulting policy and up getting pushed out by the loyaltee police (goodling) but policy types are resiliant and there should be plenty of people who want these jobs. And allmost everyone cares about something, about some issue, so allmost everyone needs a wonk on their side.

But for some reason the GOP loyaltee police has left the GOP with zero ideas people. From the biggest thinktanks to the smaller ones (even CATO has started getting rid of the sane people) all the way down to the college organizations which are breeding dirty tricksters and white kids looking for a job... But not much else.

The only policy person I can think of is Cheney who despite his flaws actually knew energy. And he is gone, for good. (which is why he can join Ken f@£&ing Mehlman in the newly gay-friendly camp, which those on the ballot will shun like a lepards colony)