{"id":1010,"date":"2008-01-17T15:15:50","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T15:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-forlorn-republican.html"},"modified":"2008-01-17T15:15:50","modified_gmt":"2008-01-17T15:15:50","slug":"a-forlorn-republican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-forlorn-republican.html","title":{"rendered":"A forlorn Republican"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From a friend who <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-very-unrepublican-race.html\">previously lamented<\/a> about the state of the Republican party:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/01\/11\/AR2008011103123.html\">Another article<\/a> appeared today remarking on the grim future this current election forebodes for the Republican party.  This time, the <em>Washington Post<\/em> takes up the topic <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-very-unrepublican-race.html\">I wrote to you on previously<\/a>.<br \/>\nAs I said before, the current disarray of the Republican Presidential field is a symptom of a much bigger problem &#8211; the party machine is breaking apart.  All of the electoral success the Republican party has seen for the last 20 years was built on a ruthless machinery that engaged all the party cogs in one winning machine.  The welds are not holding.<br \/>\nOr, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/01\/11\/AR2008011103123.html\">today&#8217;s article states<\/a>:<br \/>\n&#8220;\u2026there&#8217;s a huge crowd of self-described conservatives standing around the Republican elephant shouting &#8220;Do something!&#8221; But what they want the poor beast to do is very unclear. And it doesn&#8217;t take an expert in pachyderm psychology to know that if a big enough mob shouts at an elephant long enough, the most likely result will be a mindless stampede &#8212; in this case, either to general election defeat or to disastrously unconservative policies, or both.<br \/>\nMany Republican politicos still hope that one of the candidates may be an elephant tamer.  I doubt it.  The current circus shows that the ringleaders failed to build the circus tent correctly to begin with.<br \/>\nBeyond the grim possibility of losing the 2008 election, this spectacle may have implications for decades to come.  What if the Democrats put on a show worth watching, while the Republican elephant makes fans wants to cover their eyes?  What if the crowds stop attending?   Worse- what if they find another show to patronize?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a friend who previously lamented about the state of the Republican party: Another article appeared today remarking on the grim future this current election forebodes for the Republican party. This time, the Washington Post takes up the topic I wrote to you on previously. As I said before, the current disarray of the Republican&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A forlorn Republican - J Walking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-forlorn-republican.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A forlorn Republican - J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From a friend who previously lamented about the state of the Republican party: Another article appeared today remarking on the grim future this current election forebodes for the Republican party. This time, the Washington Post takes up the topic I wrote to you on previously. As I said before, the current disarray of the Republican&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-forlorn-republican.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"J Walking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-17T15:15:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Kuo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A forlorn Republican - J Walking","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jwalking\/2008\/01\/a-forlorn-republican.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A forlorn Republican - J Walking","og_description":"From a friend who previously lamented about the state of the Republican party: Another article appeared today remarking on the grim future this current election forebodes for the Republican party. This time, the Washington Post takes up the topic I wrote to you on previously. 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