{"id":787,"date":"2006-10-12T22:07:54","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T03:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=787"},"modified":"2006-12-21T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2006-12-21T15:29:08","slug":"the-death-of-a-respectable-gop-as-i-knew-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=787","title":{"rendered":"Decline and Fall of the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Brooks writes about <a href=\"http:\/\/select.nytimes.com\/2006\/10\/12\/opinion\/12brooks.html?ex=1160798400&#038;en=488eb98c97c659bd&#038;ei=5121&#038;emc=eta1\">the Ohio Senate Race<\/a> and profiles the Democratic candidate and the Republican incumbent he is close to upsetting.\u00c2\u00a0This\u00c2\u00a0is the triumph of\u00c2\u00a0Tom DeLay&#8217;s, Ralph Reed&#8217;s and Karl Rove&#8217;s remorseless zero sum politics.<\/p>\n<p>These men\u00c2\u00a0wanted a lasting Republican majority but they only managed to infect the apendages of the Republican body with gangrene. They\u00c2\u00a0poisoned the moderates by calling them RINO&#8217;s (Republicans in name only) They poisoned the libertarians who wanted small government with their unprecedented debt. They poisoned the patriots by repeating the mistake of Vietnam. They even polluted the religious wing of the party by proving time and again that politics is Caesar&#8217;s realm.<\/p>\n<p>It will be\u00c2\u00a0interesting to see\u00c2\u00a0if, after this election, there are any centrists left in Congress at all. They&#8217;ll have to be Democrats because all that&#8217;s left of the Republican center\u00c2\u00a0is a\u00c2\u00a0death rattle.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Brooks writes about the Ohio Senate Race and profiles the Democratic candidate and the Republican incumbent he is close to upsetting.\u00c2\u00a0This\u00c2\u00a0is the triumph&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,15,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bush-leagues","category-congress-2006","category-gods-own-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}