Memo to GOP: The bells toll for thee

I'VE SEEN SOME some full-throated take-downs of Republican politics in my time. But the scathing critique delivered by Mike Lofgren is one for the ages. And rest assured, this is no Liberal screed. Mr. Lofgren is a stoic, rock-ribbed Republican. But he's mad as hell and opted not to take it anymore. Finally fed up, Lofgren recently ended his 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. But rather than go Gently Into That Good Night, Lofgren wheeled his field artillery battery around and opened fired on his own GOP lines. The result is a spectacular explosion of cogent but damning shock & awe. It should be required reading for Republicans, Democrats, the media/blogger elite, and voters who wish to understand the GOP's stunning descent into madness. Although Lofgren's primary target is his own party, his withering but interlocking fire spares no one in our political ecosytem.

A few sample salvos:

Lofgren pities those "millions of Americans" now tuning into the "tragicomedy" of Washington politics. He says they will be shocked to learn that the once Grand Old Party is now chocked "full of lunatics." That the "crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today." Moreover, Lofgren writes, it should be obvious to any clear-eyed observer that "the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe." Lofgren embraces John Judis' summation of the modern GOP: "Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority." Judis likens it historically to John Calhoun's antebellum Southern Democrats "who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery." Lofgren wholeheartedly agrees. And these opening shots are just his warm-up act.

On the media: Lofgren says the mainstream media "have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness." In combination with "the hazy confusion of low-information voters," we've effectively undermined confidence in our democratic institutions. He notes: "The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News." It's an electoral Catch-22.

On Democrats: Lofgren thinks they have ceded the field. "Above all, they do not understand language," he writes. "Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?"

Lofgren's bottom line about the GOP is as straightforward as it is scary. (1) The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. "Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public." (2) They worship at the altar of Mars (the Roman god of war). "[It] is the force that gives meaning to their lives." And (3) Republicans are drunk on that old time religion. Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP, Lofgren writes. In his view, "the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party."

And remember, all of this is coming from a life-long Republican, a veteran staffer who, as Steve Benen noted, "knows exactly what GOP policymakers are thinking." You've never heard of Mike Lofgren. Neither have I. Neither had Steve Benen who flagged this extraordinary piece. That's because Lofgren, like most patriots, eschewed the limelight. Quietly but gainfully contributing to the nation was more important to him. And that is precisely the point. For there is nothing more powerful than the swing of an axe by an honest man without an axe to grind.