Excerpts
A one-party system is not in anyone's best interest. But fear is on track to utterly derail the GOP and push it to irrelevancy.
When the face of the GOP becomes contorted through apocalyptic rhetoric, dark delusions, and ugliness aimed at anyone different, the country as a whole will recoil.
In the end, what Americans want is not a mob of screaming ditto-heads assembled to vent anger about a disjointed litany of issues from abortion to term limits to financial bailouts and the legitimacy of President Obama's election.
No, what the nation wants are sensible, practical solutions to its problems. It needs Republicans, whether far right or moderate, to be part of the conversation about critical issues from health-care reform to getting out of Afghanistan.
We need their ideas, their dissenting voices, to strengthen the process of constructing rational plans for the greater good. It's a lot easier to scream and shout in nebulous protests or raise the tangled specter of socialism or Nazism than to engage in the hard work necessary to make tough choices and good decisions.
But nothing stays the same forever and change in America will happen with or without Republican input. The longer the GOP allows itself to drift without a rudder in the insanity of the moment, the longer it will take to gain the trust of voters who know the difference between noise and noble.
If Republicans don't want to be marginalized into extreme movements like the John Birchers or worse, they need to say more than no and do more than maintain the status quo. They need to stop being intimidated by those who are paid well to stir up public misgivings for broadcast ratings, or accept the certain death of their party in 20 years.
Regressive nonsense doesn't cut it in the 21st century. Right-wingers have had their fun with noisemaking, scorch-and-burn tantrums to rally the core, provoke the perplexed, and orchestrate an uprising against everything and everybody. Now it's time for conservatives with a conscience to get serious and come to work for their party and country.
Bold emphasis mine
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