"[T]he Republican Party has come unhinged. Its fevered hallucinations involve threats from imaginary communists and socialists who, seemingly, lurk around every corner. Climate change - a reality recognized by every single significant scientific body and academy in the world - is a liberal conspiracy conjured up by Al Gore and other leftists who want to destroy America. Large numbers of Republicans - the notorious birthers - believe that the President was not born in the United States. Even worse, few figures in the GOP have the courage to confront them.
Republican economic policies are also indefensible.
The GOP constantly claims that its opponents are engaged in "class warfare," but this is an exercise in projection. In Republican proposals, the wealthy win, and the rest of us lose - one only has to look at Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget to see that.
As Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein have written, "the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." Its reckless behavior helps drive the political dysfunction crippling our nation.
In the end, it offers a dystopian vision of our future - a harsher, crueler and more merciless America starkly divided between the riders, and the ridden." Michael Stafford
Michael Stafford is a former Republican Party official. This quote comes from an article he wrote that begins with the following lines:
"I’m a life-long Republican. My political affiliation has been woven intrinsically into the very fabric of my being.
When I was young, Ronald Reagan bestrode the world like a colossus. I grew up watching the Cold War end-game play out as Reagan faced down the Soviet Union- which really was evil- and helped break the long night of communist repression in Eastern Europe. He was my hero."
I suspect Stafford isn't the only Republican who's thinking these things, even though they might be afraid to admit it.