Missing The Point - Repeatedly

We've gotten more than a few grumbles from certain quarters lately - a few subscribers have even dropped their daily e-mail subscriptions - because of how harsh we've been on the Republican Party and its candidates in recent commentaries.

As is typical these days, there are those on the right who think we're "in the tank" for the Democrats, ignoring comments like our obvious - and deliberate - calling out of formerly rising Democratic star Cory Booker, in Wednesday's edition. There are also those on the left who are equally disgruntled, and who insist Obama and the Democrats haven't done enough - no matter what they have actually done.

From our perspective, we've just been telling the truth - to both of the above groups, and everyone else too. Right now, the truth is, as Vice President Joe Biden noted this week: "This is NOT your father's Republican Party."

Unless, of course, your father was a Cro-Magnon, with a penchant for beating on things.

As we and many others have noted many times recently, the un-evolved style of racism, bigotry, and classism in the modern GOP,  may be the end of their party. Unless the GOP moves away from its offensive and nativist policy positions, the simple facts of changing demographics in the United States that keep appearing in piles of studies and polls - including the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll -may render the GOP extinct in the not-too-distant future.

Even so, right-winger Kevin Williamson over at the National Journal attempts to avoid the GOP's recent knuckle-dragging attitudes on race, immigration, and sexual orientation by re-writing history, the way conservatives wish it were - or as Jonathan Chait says, in a way that "absolves their own ideology of any guilt."

No matter what lies conservative extremists tell themselves on this issue, it won't change the fact that their political actions - like denying an honest DREAM Act - will continue to divide factions of the GOP from itself.

This isn't the only way Republicans are driving wedges into their own party - and the country.

There are also those who keep insisting Mitt Romney's experience as a casino capitalist, at vulture capital firm Bain Capital, is a good measure of his fitness for the job of President - including Mr. Romney himself.

As we and a pile of others pointed out this week, Romney's experience maximizing profits at the expense of jobs, for a small group of investors doesn't qualify him for the job of President anymore than it did Michael Milken, back in the 1980s.

It also doesn't help Mr. Romney's position when he calls himself a 'numbers guy', and then proceeds to get all the numbers wrong on critical issues like unemployment. He also can't even explain what - exactly - he learned in business school, when asked directly, as he was by journalist Mark Halperin.

Furthermore, while Republicans keep trying to push the idea that President Obama is some kind of "tax and spend" boogeyman, the facts simply don't support them there either. As the Wall Street Journal - that bastion of liberal journalism - made blazingly clear on Wednesday, Federal spending under President Obama has increased at the slowest rate since the end of the 1950s. As former journalist and current White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told the press corps, "Do not buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness."

On subject after subject, time and time again, Republicans and conservatives keep being intellectually lazy on nearly every major subject we can think of. [And yes, it IS making them dumber, and more conservative, as studies keep proving - which is a vicious cycle.]

This is not the Republican Party of days gone by. Those kind of Republicans could usually admit when they were wrong, and move forward, together, with Democrats and independents to make progress happen again.

Today's Republicans need to put down their metaphorical mallets, and quit driving wedges into their party, and our country.