GUESS IT'S THAT TIME FOR A REPUBLICAN PARTY REBRANDING

This blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...focusing on the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

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Political parties are in a bind when they don't have anything of substance to offer and don't have the sense, depth of real feeling, nor intellectual nuance to come up with real thoughts, real positions, or real contributions to society. Lacking these qualifications, a party such as the Republicans once more has to face the Nixonian challenge...'WTF are we gonna do to save this sinking ship?'  But, this time things seem more desperate than in Nixon's time because he and Ronald Reagan used up all the storylines, diversions, schemes, plots, canards, red herrings, and other facadic masks ...ie. they left nothing for current Republicans to scrounge from to fool the public.  

But, 'Hey, no worries...just rebrand, repaint, re-'stuff'  that smelly old sock...with anything that can be trotted out under the banner of 'New!', and pray that the public is as stupid as you think it is and that it swallows the tasteless swill that rolls down the chute from the Republican propaganda mill.

And this is where the 2022 Republican Party is now - it is neck-deep in mucky infighting, spouting slogans that carry no meaning except dog-whistle calls to violence and hate. It is awash in scandal, and an embarrassingly large number of its 'leaders' seem near to real historical charges of insurrection and sedition.

Back in 2009, this blogger commented on the empty vacuum that was the Republican Party which was drowning in its own self-destructive quicksand of empty phrases and zombie substitutions for real leaders; it was desperately reaching for a lifesaver, anything that could float and save the Party from complete irrelevance. 

And so the Republican 'brain trust' came up with idea of simply 'rebranding' itself as if it was a box of kiddy cereal that needed brighter colored packaging, larger type and more (faked) flavor stimulation. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was the result - blame everything on America's favorite drug addiction, race.

So was 'invented' the easiest line up of substitutes for real thinking and substantive political platforms ... the Great Con Series (the Loyalty Oath (Michael Steele, RNC Chair/President) and the Tea Party....both mirroring their authoritarian precursors of 1930s Brown Shirts and the extreme authoritarian flavor of the Bolsheviks, Stalin, Mao, ...

Entering into the maelstrom of political 'midterms, one wonders what meaningless 'cons' and diversions the Republican Party will come up with this time...especially its ship has been near completely hi-jacked by such numeraries as Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn, Susan Collins (the sea anchor), and a host of other 'special' politicians...Cotton, Abbott, Cruz, etc.