It started under Republican SALESMAN and draft dodging Hollywood entertainer Ronald Reagan. Part of the Republican “marketing” has been to make Reagan a cult leader, a fictional hero in fictional stories.

The Republican marketing campaign: find three “ideas” that serve corporate interests and poll well, use Frank Luntz inspired linguistic manipulations that use highly charged emotional trigger words to hone the message to as few words as possible, find a right wing billionaire(s) to fund the marketing campaign, get right wing extremist Grover Norquist to coordinate the marketing with his cabal of corporate overlords, send the talking points to Limbaugh, Fox [Propaganda, not] news, Politico, and Drudge, and then pound your three poll tested emotionally manipulative “idea” phrases until the corporate media starts regurgitating those talking points in print, on the radio, and on television, and voila, an “instant” “grass roots” “movement” is born.

Regurgitate, rinse, repeat.

Republicans are nothing but con artist salesman and if Republican voters ever figure out how badly the Republican leadership has betrayed America the Republican Debtor-Corporatist Party would be over. Period.

Repubs have ‘worked’ this for about 30 years and I doubt will give it up. The meaningless robot tones coming recently from the hapless Boehner etal are really cover stories for keep ‘em ignorant and keep’em angry.

However, I sense a tiny glimmer of ‘ho-hum’ among the plebes these days so perhaps a corner is about to be turned. Let’s hope.

Actually, I snorted so loudly in my cubicle, it led to rumors of a swine flu outbreak in the dept.

Now this Republican, McCain’s daughter, is someone who gets what’s wrong with her party, and is someone I’d be afraid of. “GOP: The Next Generation”. I see Sarah Palin as leading the Romulan faction in the GOP Federation.

But instead of “rebranding”, or GOP: TNG, what this country really needs is the kind of honesty voiced by Andrew Bacevich. Because they’re so steeped in fiction and delusions of superiority , I can’t imagine the chest puffing GOP ever admitting the kinds of things Bacevich is talking about. I can barely imagine the Democrats having the guts to say these things, but these are things that so desperately need to be said. This country so badly needs a spiritual house cleaning. Rebranding is just putting a pretty bow on a sick and rotting corpse.

I can actually totally relate to that. When democrats lost in 2002 and 2004, I remember saying that we should ditch the quislings like Lieberman and Zell Miller (and, yay, mission accomplished!). I was utterly sick of hearing “tut tut, the democrats are all so crazy nowadays” from democrats.

Now the republicans have lost in 2006 and 2008, and a few republicans have started saying “tut tut, the other republicans are all so crazy nowadays”, and I completely sympathize with their desire to purge ‘em. I’m actually a little sorry the democratic party is so willing to take in the republican quisling Specter; it makes sense under the circumstances, but I do regret adding another fair-weather friend/wanker to the democratic caucus.

The difference, of course, between my position in 2003 and the “pure party” republicans now is that the republican party is pretty darned “pure” already. Whereas the democrats then were being totally squishy, rolling over right and left, trying to rebrand themselves as “the other conservative party” and “just like the republicans, but less forceful and passionate”, republicans today have near-unity. I would have been delighted, for example, if in 2002 there were only three democrats in the senate voting with Bush on the iraq war resolution, and none at all in the house. In fact there were 22 in the senate and 127 in the house. (And then we ran one of the 22 as our presidential nominee, for crying out loud!)

But still, I can relate. The republicans are just beginning their time in the wilderness. They’re probably screwed for the next couple of elections no matter what. Maybe it makes sense, from their perspective, to be as uncompromisingly conservative as they can possibly be during this time, to shut down every dissenter in their ranks cold, so that they don’t end up squishified like the 2002 democrats. Then, when the pendulum swings back (as alas, it surely will someday) and the voters are ready for a conservative party again, there’ll still be one.

Or, maybe they’re just nutbags.