The Tin GOP

The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz was once (as you know if you read the book) a real man. He lost his body parts one by one to a cursed axe, until he was all tin, and thus, no longer human.

I suspect the moment other people thought of him as a tin man was earlier than when he thought of himself that way. There was probably a time when he was still thinking of himself as a human with a lot of tin when everyone else was thinking of him as tin with a few flesh parts. It always takes some time to acknowledge a new reality.

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I've been fascinated by the panic of mainstream Republicans over the state of their party. Donald Trump, a racist loud-mouthed populist with no clear political philosophy beyond yellow at minorities, stands a good chance of being the Republican nominee for president of the United States. If he doesn't win, it will probably be Ted Cruz, a right-wing extremist hated by his colleagues whose only goal seems to be to cause the gears of government to grind to a halt.

Right wing pundits are wringing their hands and crying out, "THIS IS NOT OUR PARTY." They insist they are the party of small, sensible government and free-market ideals, not the party of racism and demagoguery and intolerance.

But of course, they are that party. Racism, intolerance, and rabid hatred of seemingly most of the country have been, for a long time, as much a part of the GOP as helping the rich at the expense of the poor.

Republicans once actually did believe in government as a tool to make things better. For all his flaws, it was Richard M. Nixon who started the EPA. But the party has moved much further to the right since then. The modern Republican party began with Reagan, an arch conservative who by today's standards is still too liberal for the GOP.

The GOP's cursed axe was the Tea Party. The Tea Party was fueled not by a consistent political philosophy (they would protest against government entitlements while demanding the government not cut any entitlements they enjoyed), but by rage at gun laws and the dewhitening of America, and a general sense that they were getting screwed by "them."

The Republicans saw the Tea Party as a large voter block that they could use to gain and hold onto political power. They embraced the Tea Party, they supported Tea Party Candidates, the chose Sarah Freaking Palin as a vice presidential candidate, all to get those Tea Party voters to come out and help them crush the Democrats. They raised their voices, questioned Obama's citizenship, swift-boated John Kerry, and allowed stupidity and craziness to take a place of honor in the party.

And without them realizing it, everything they saw as classic conservatism was being chopped away.

Right now the leading GOP presidential candidates, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, are all Tea Partiers. The are all extremely right wing. And the percentage of Republicans who support them make up a strong majority of the party. Republicans fed the Tea Party like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors, and my, how it has grown.

Now that the last vestige of human flesh is gone, the heart is absent, and the GOP is 100% tin, conservative pundits are screaming that something has to be done before the Republican party is destroyed.

But there is no more Republican party now, there is only the Tea Party. Eventually, the few remaining Republicans will have to accept that.