Jonathan Chait on Growing Desperation of "Last Chance" Republicans

Finally this morning, a helpful article by Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine right now about why the Republicans are so intent this election cycle, and so determined to do anything possible to derail Obama's chances at a second term in the White House:

As Chait notes, there's a growing recognition on the part of both Republican leaders and the Republican base that this may well be the last chance of a party that has melded its political future to a demographic group on the wane (aging white Christians) to reassert its control of the political process in the U.S.  He writes, 

The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.” Not the last chance for the Republican Party to win power—there will be many of those, and over time it will surely learn to compete for nonwhite voters—but its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics. (And the last chance to stop the policy steamroller of the new Democratic majority.) And whatever rhetorical concessions to moderates and independents the eventual Republican nominee may be tempted to make in the fall, he’ll find himself fairly boxed in by everything he’s already done this winter to please that base.

My conclusion: a great deal rides for the future of the U.S. (and the planet as a whole) on how the current U.S. elections play out.  Political minorities who know that they represent a waning and increasingly extreme minority are apt, once they seize power, to behave in desperate, extremist, and ruthless ways, precisely because they recognize that their only chance to continue to exercise power as a minority is to create systems that override the wishes of the majority and assure minority control in perpetuity.

In my view, permitting the extremist minority we now see in full light of day as the Republican debates roll out this kind of power to determine the future of the nation--and the world--would be dangerous in the extreme.  And this is part of why I am so deeply appalled at the behavior of the U.S. Catholic bishops and their liberal co-belligerents in recent weeks.

Pro-life their behavior is decidedly not.

The graphic is from Monica Briano's MB Film & Photography blog.