An Invitation and Open Hand to the Disappearing Moderate Republican:
Look, you just need to accept it, remaining moderate Republicans. You fucked up. You miscalculated, thinking that sticking with Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP leadership in merely throwing up a Maginot line against anything that the President and the Democrats in Congress wanted to pass would be the way to assure your party's re-ascendancy. Yeah, you might get the House, but the cost is that you, nervous moderate Republicans, are going to be purged eventually or you're going to be isolated. All it's gonna take is for Rand Paul or that dude in Alaska who looks like your niece-raping uncle to win, and they'll be gunning for you, Olympia, Susan, and the others. You put party over country, and your party is about to abandon you. Congratulations on creating the conditions for your irrelevance. The temptation here is to say, "Go fuck yourselves with McConnell's glasses and enjoy having a Palin-endorsed primary challenger."

Over here on the Democratic side, we liberals have needed to accept that, since Reagan, the entire range of political thought has shifted rightward. We know that Clinton helped it along by pushing the Democratic Party further and further to the right. We know that the chance of actual liberal ideas coming to fruition decrease with every election, but we keep plugging away as Democrats because, really, truly, we have nowhere else to go. Until someone like eeevil George Soros is willing to fund a genuinely left-wing party, we gotta stick with Democrats or just get pushed out of the argument (perhaps winning the occasional race with the Bernie Sanders-type independent).

But, in theory, moderate Republicans do have a place to go. And that's the Democratic Party, which is, in terms of pre-Reagan ideology, is pretty much a moderate Republican Party. Right now, President Obama, Tim Kaine, and every goddamned Democratic strategist needs to figure out how to get the moderates to switch parties. It's the way to pull the rug out from under the potential Republican majority. Yeah, GOP moderates will fear the Specter effect: getting a challenge from the left in a Democratic primary. But Specter was an idiot and a jerk who never made a clear case for changing parties other than "to save my ass." Changing parties right after the midterms, for instance, would demonstrate that, yeah, ass-saving is part of the equation, but that a moderate also wants to do some good for the country.

This is one of the most depressing things the Rude Pundit has ever written, for it presumes that the best the country can hope for anymore is not the achievement of progressive goals, but that our legislative branch is not overrun by the crazies. However, we're facing total and utter gridlock in a Congress that's intent on trying to bring down the President through bullshit investigations and hearings. Every time the Rude Pundit thinks we can't get any more fucked, a bigger dildo is brought out and someone says, "Oh, no. We're shoving this one up your ass now." So the only way to hope for actual progress, even if it's not strictly progressive, is to get some Republicans to jump ship.

So there ya go, moderate Republicans. You can stick with obstructionism and party over country, if you want. And then, one day soon, you're just gonna sound like Mike Castle and Bob Inglis, bitching about how the conservatives are murdering the GOP. It's too late, motherfuckers. Your GOP is already gutted. And you helped tear out the organs. Now liberate yourselves and come over to the side that actually believes the same things you do.