Are Americans Losing Faith In The Republican Party As A Legitimate Institution?

Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kansas Republicans, so sick of far right extremist lunatic Sam Brownback, once their senator and now their governor, that they're going to help a Democrat beat him! Over 100 prominent Republicans endorsed Paul Davis, including 2 former lieutenant governors, a former congresswoman and the state insurance commissioner.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report in recent days shifted its prediction of the race from "leaning Republican'' to tossup.

The pushback against Mr. Brownback from some in the GOP is due in part to his effort two years ago to rid the state Senate of its more centrist Republican members. In 2012, he backed several challengers in GOP statehouse primaries, arguing that the incumbents weren't conservative enough. The campaign was successful, with voters ousting several veteran Republican senators, including the chamber's president.

Publicly available polling in the governor's race is scant. The most recent poll, by SurveyUSA, had Mr. Davis leading Mr. Brownback by 6 percentage points among likely voters. Mr. Brownback captured only 62% of those who identified themselves as Republicans, while Mr. Davis won support from 89% of Democrats.

In a poll this week, 37% of Mississippi Republicans said they would back the Confederate side if there was another Civil War. These people have two senators and 3 House Members making decisions for normal Americans in Washington. (Mississippi's 4th congressman, Bennie Thompson, has a carefully drawn district encompassing the African-American neighborhoods of Jackson plus virtually the whole heavily black Mississippi Delta counties, from just north of Natchez all the way up past Vicksburg, Greenville and Clarksdale and Tunica's "Sugar Ditch Alley" to the casino town of Robinsonville/Tunica Resorts. Mississippi is 37.4% African-American, MS-02, Thompson's district is 65.2% African-American.) It's just another story of coordinated Republican gerrymandering undermining American democracy.

Everything the Republicans do undermines American democracy. Right-wing parties exist to undermine democracy… and they always have, all through history. They exist to protect the interests of the rich and powerful and to make sure majorities of common folk don't intrude where they're not welcome.

Republicans are tied in knots-- and have the Congress tied in knots-- even over something as simple and uncontroversial as fixing the country's highways and bridges. As Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan said this week, "Speaker Boehner’s lawsuit against the president is frivolous and purely political." And most Americans agree with him that it's just another Republican stunt that keeps them from doing anything substantive for the American people, while pleasing their Hate Talk Radio base.

Gallup also released a poll this week and the results were inevitable: "Fifteen percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job… Congress's low approval ratings for the past several years underscore the idea that Americans think their representative bodies need dramatic changes. Gallup in the current poll asked respondents in an open-ended format what their most important recommendation to fix Congress would be. More than one in five Americans (22%) are ready to start over entirely, saying all members should be fired or replaced."