Inside The Sick And Demented Mind Of A Republican Grappling For Answers To Why His Party Was Routed-- But Unable To Face The Truth

Yesterday Fred Kaplan warned us about war criminal Don Rumsfeld's revisionist memoirs. They're not written yet put Kaplan is interpolating from the revisionist Op-Ed Rumsfeld did a few days ago for the NY Times. Rumsfeld hasn't been hauled before any war crimes tribunals yet and it's not likely he ever will be. Instead, he's busy with self-serving re-writes of history. His motivation is writ large.

Robert Hardaway is a law professor at the University of Denver and his motivations are less obvious-- but even more crackpot and delusional than Rummy's. Reading his poisonous screed in today's Rocky Mountain News I imagined what I would have done had I ever walked into a classroom and found as reactionary a jackass as Hardaway spouting off.

If you think that all the willful ignorance and bigotry from the far, far right comes from toothless rednecks running around in Klan robes in the hill country of Georgia and Tennessee and in Mormon cult centers, you haven't read anything from neo-fascist polemicist Robert Hardaway. And, yes, there are imbeciles are other law schools besides Regent and Liberty. Hardaway is like a walking, talking, barking personification of exactly why the American people have rejected the GOP. In Colorado, McCain was supported by 45% of voters while lunatic fringe Senate candidate Robert Schaffer got 42% and extremist nut incumbent Marilyn Musgrave was supported by 44% of her constituents. Let the professor speak for himself:

It should have been a slam-dunk for the Republicans in the 2008 presidential election. After all, the Democrats had inexplicably chosen as their nominee the least-qualified candidate in American history. Indeed, the only other candidate in American history to go directly from the Senate to the White House with neither gubernatorial nor military executive experience was Warren G. Harding, by consensus the worst president in American history. Moreover, Obama's voting record in the Senate has also been rated as the most hard-left voting record in American history.

To lose to such a candidate required more than simple ineptitude. It required an almost pathological determination to lose.

And yet, it may yet prove of value to the Republican Party if it can learn the following lessons from its defeat:

First, if you are going to go against an obviously unqualified candidate, choose a candidate with substantial executive experience. Only a handful of candidates in American history have ever succeeded to the office of the presidency without at least some gubernatorial executive experience. The Republicans had their chance to choose Mitt Romney, who not only had experience as a governor, but also experience as a business leader and organizer of the Olympics. Romney also "walked the walk" on universal health care in Massachusetts, unlike Democrats who have traditionally only talked the talk.

Second, don't reject a candidate because of his religion. Polls of Republicans expressed greater reservations over a Mormon candidate than an Islamic one.

Third, don't choose a man in his 70s to go up against a candidate of youth, vigor, and charisma, especially when your own candidate also has no executive experience.

Fourth, don't assume that independent voters will vote for the candidate who best upholds such traditional values as fiscal responsibility, strong national security, protection of our borders, and limited government. We should know by now that swing voters vote on the basis of personality and television persona. Thus, Obama's impending victory no more reflects the electorate's turn to the hard left, than Reagan's 49-state electoral victory in 1980 reflected a turn to the right.

Fifth, don't insult the intelligence of the voters with simplistic characterizations of the opponent's positions. Those only fuel counterattacks by a sympathetic media eager to show that 30-second ads do not completely set forth the complexities of the opponent's agenda. Rather, Republican ads need only have shown, without commentary, actual videos of Obama refusing to put his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem, his statement that he had visited "57 states" and the town hall video in which he talked about the need for asthma suffers to get "breathalyzers"-- followed by the simple question: "Ready to lead? You decide."

Sixth, ask voters whether the old American adage still holds true-- namely that one's character is evaluated in large part by the company he keeps. And leave it at that. No need to name names.

Seventh, don't let your party be outspent by such business tycoons as George Soros.

Eighth, and perhaps hardest of all, set aside social issues and concentrate on fiscal responsibility, national security, border protection, and fairness to the teeming millions of those seeking legal immigration. You don't have to give up your principles on social issues, but, absent a Reagan-quality communicator as your nominee, you're not going to win on them.

Ninth, decide whether public displays of support for such issues are worth losing an election.

And finally-- at number ten-- get some members of your party to audition for Saturday Night Live. There should be ample material (see No. 5 above).

So if you have a kid thinking of the University of Denver...