The Inmates Are Running the Party – The Dispatch – The Dispatch

If you evidence that the GOP has fallen is about the Oregon and Arizona parties, it seems to me to be a little soon to say that it has already fallen.

Its not great that we have a lunatic fringe, just as it wasnt when they were led by Buchanan, or Ron Paul, or Ted Cruz, or Robert Welch, Jesse Helms, or any of the other past eras of crazy.

Its a great, great, loss to the Republic that Rob Portman, one of the 21st Centurys most talented and honorable Republicans, whether as a Representative who did sterling work improving legislation and passing conservative reforms in a bipartisan manner, an OMB director who was able to send budgets that balanced to Congress in the last moment of fiscal hope before the 2006 elections, the USTR who was able to bring sufficient agreement around his FTAs that Obama merely delayed signing off on them rather than sacrificing them, and a Senator who continued the work he did as a Representative, finding areas of bipartisan reform that could pass a Senate where there was little interest in cooperation.

But its not new that maybe Ohio would select an enthusiast for the Senate. Its not new that that might cause a loss; its as much Josh Mandel as Sherrod Brown that has kept Brown in the Senate. The Ohio party in general is pretty strong; 2/3 of the house and 3/4 of the Senate, the governor, and a Senator, with the party infrastructure and the elected officials generally being fairly sensible people.

In general, if you look around the country, the Republican Party is in relatively healthy shape. Its not great at dealing with Trump, just as political parties generally arent good at dealing with their own bad members. But most of them are, for the most part, not Cruz or Paul. By and large the crazies arent totally without power (Cruz and Paul exist, as do the AZ and OR state parties), but even areas where the crazies dominated for a while are showing signs of hope. The California Republican Freshmen are generally pretty sensible. The party across the North East is flourishing with few conspiracy theorists. West Virginia is just killing it.

If you treat every example of a bad republican as indicative of the death of the party, the party will always disappoint. But take a step back, stop joining the media pile on that makes the worst person of the moment the face of the party, and the picture will become a lot brighter very quickly. Although it is sad about Portman.

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The Inmates Are Running the Party - The Dispatch - The Dispatch