On Rats, Sinking Ships, and the GOP

Cruising through news stories today, it strikes me that the Republican Party is tripping itself up by being too geezer-ish (couldn’t think of the right word) and too juvenile at the same time.

Robert Draper’s “Can the Republicans be Saved From Obsolescence?” covers the geezerness of the Republican Party. Draper documents that establishment Republicans are not not dealing with change — technical, demograpic, or cultural.

They are light years behind the Dems in technology. They are oblivious to recent cultural shifts. Some of them are still talking about building new coalitions of white people. Even when the Party organizes a committee to find out what it’s doing wrong, the Same Old Farts who have been running the GOP for years are put in charge of it.

Younger (and more tech-savvy) Republicans want the GOP to back off divisive social issues. Ed Kilgore comments, “if you had to choose one theme that underlies the arguments Draper’s hearing from the cool kids of the GOP, it’s that the Christian Right has gotta go.”

Even James Joyner admits that “the Republican Party is still running on a platform designed to solve the problems of the Carter Administration.”

For the juvenile side of movement conservatism, see David Corn’s “FreedomWorks Made Video of Fake Giant Panda Having Sex With Fake Hillary Clinton.” Apparently Matt Kibbe, President and CEO of FreedomWorks, has been running the advocacy group/Super PAC with all the seriousness and gravitas of a frat house jello wrestling party.

Sorta related — Haley Barbour is telling Republican insiders to stop donating money to Club For Growth Make of that what you will.