Republicans Trying To Figure Out How To Expand Their Collapsing Whites-Only Pup Tent

With the GOP continuing to fracture along ideological lines-- just today Mike Huckabee followed Jeb Bush, Jr in endorsing radical right insurgent Marco Rubio against the Republican Establishment's pick, Charlie Crist, in the race for the open US Senate seat-- Republicans are wondering how to persuade voters that the party is on the mend and not some hothouse dominated by right-wing extremists with contempt for mainstream sensibilities.

Republican Party propagandist Tucker Carlson, who became a Fox News consultant last week, thinks the way to turn things around for his floundering party is to start a right-wing version of the Huffington Post. He's calling it The DailyCaller and its purpose will be to make Fox and Hate Talk Radio seem almost mainstream in comparison to the incendiary, hysterical anti-Obama jihad that will be its hallmark. Doesn't sound likely to expand the tent? No one else thinks so either. And isn't David Frum already failing at his attempt to do the same thing?

This morning's CQPolitics reports on another initiative, this one by Republican Party operative Douglas Holtz-Eakin who wants to start another right-wing think tank. Right wing think tanks have been very successful, financially, for the folks that wind up being underwritten by them. Holtz-Eakin says his new one would be modeled on the progressive think tank Center For American Progress. His mission is to keep the base from shrinking any further, to appeal to more diverse groups, and to see if they can find anyone on the right who has any new ideas that might appeal to the mainstream.

“I think there is now pretty widespread recognition that the Republican Party needs to become demographically broader, more welcoming of different ideas,” said Holtz-Eakin, who ran the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005. “And it’s time to think strategically about how to appeal more broadly outside the South.”

...The irony, of course, is that the Center for American Progress itself was developed as a liberal answer to the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that has been a source of Republican policy ideas for decades. But Holtz-Eakin says established think tanks of the right, like Heritage and the American Enterprise Institute, were “not helpful” during the McCain campaign because they weren’t politically engaged or innovative in their media strategies.

It sounds something like what Eric Cantor, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and a bunch of other tired old right-wing politicians tried to launch in a Virginia pizza parlor a few weeks ago, the so-called National Council for a New America. After Rush Limbaugh denounced it, it kind of ground to a halt and disappeared without a trace. But where Cantor and his clique was just regurgitating tired old right-wing talking points in a pizzeria, Holtz-Eakin wants to broaden the Republican message so that it will have some relevance to people who aren't members of whites-only country clubs. Ex-Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) thinks its hopeless, at least for now, because the base is so far to the right and close to clinically insane, that it isn't open to anything short of domestic terrorism. “I think the grass roots right now is in an ornery mood-- ‘we are who we are.’” And no one wants to get anywhere near to who they are. "Ornery" isn't nearly as descriptive as "ugly."

Holtz-Eakin thinks the way to go is to "apply conservative principles in innovative fashion and develop solutions on issues that haven’t been a priority for Republicans." One of the darlings of his "movement" is clueless and over-hyped Wisconsin reactionary, Paul Ryan who came up with the Republican Party's "innovative and alternative" health care plan. Ryan's plans-- like Ryan's alternative budget of a few months ago-- have met with dersion and scorn from all sides.

The conservative TV pontiffs and their print counterparts, including The Wall Journal editorial page, are saying all hail the free market alternative to the Democrats government takeover of our uniquely American healthcare system. The Republicans are eager to admit that the current system is broken, but reform should not destroy it. After all, for those that can afford it or get unlimited care from the government or their employers, the care is the best in the world.

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s “Patients' Choice Act” is a thinly masked rehash of "McCain Healthcare: An Evil Play on Words." Both the Ryan and Senator McCain plans depend on the states, out of the goodness of their hearts, to provide “guaranteed access.” Neither plan actually forces private insurance companies to eliminate medical underwriting, nor provides for enforceable state high risk pools or for a government plan to insure the people a private insurer rejects.

Ryan’s “Patients' Choice Act Q&As” helps us dissect the illusion of guaranteed access. Guaranteed access was never intended to be confused with or imply guaranteed issue. First, consistent with McCain, Ryan would move the tax advantage from employers to employees and individuals. Next, the same type of voluntary insurance exchanges would be regulated at the state level, as would any high risk pools. Each state would act as a laboratory of innovation in cost control and adverse risk redistribution amongst private carriers.

...The Ryan plan actually offers nothing concrete. Just the dream that states might want to reform health insurance on their own. Many decades of experience has already proved Ryan wrong.

Greg Sargent points to another dynamic frustrating the Republicans who are attempting to move away from the Limbaugh-Cheney-Gingrich GOP model of extremism and mindless obstructionism-- the far right's shocking reaction to President Obama's nomination of a respected moderate woman judge to the Supreme Court.

Sonia Sotomayor was nominated only 24 hours ago, but a familiar pattern is already visible: The overheated conservative reaction to the pick is likely to further complicate the GOP’s efforts to shake off its image as intolerant, backward-looking, harshly obstructionist, and captive to extreme elements.

While some Republicans, particularly those who will have to face the voters next year, are starting to get cold feet about the disgusting smear campaign against Sonia Sotomayor, the shriveling GOP base hasn't gotten the new talking points yet and they're marching off to war-- against America. This kind of response from Tom Fitton, head of an extremist Republican Party front group, Judicial Watch, is what makes Americans mistrustful of the GOP.

David Shuster: "What evidence do you have that she would put her feelings and politics above the rule of law?"

Tom Fitton: "Because President Obama chose her."

As Christy Hardin Smith pointed out, "Taaaa daaaaaaaaaah; She was nominated by a Democratic President. Ergo, she must be unacceptable without any factual foundation as to why." That's the GOP mindset and no amount of Paul Ryan budgets without numbers or recycled plans to kill health care reform and no number of pizza parlor media opportunities with Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush will change what Americans have come to see in the Republican Party-- and hear from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and extremist members of Congress like the 3 crazy Jims (Inhofe, Bunning and DeMint) every single day. Watch the GOP mindset in action: