Fringe

Rather than recognizing that their manufactured polls were wrong, that what they heard on Fox "news" was unmitigated bullshit, Republicans -- 49% of them, anyway -- believe that Barack Obama "stole" the election. How, exactly, is not clear beyond one undeniable fact: it was ACORN. Seriously. An organization that no longer exists, and hasn't for a few years, ever since it was falsely accused of voter fraud, is what that near-majority of today's Rs think caused their falsehoods to crumble and their piss-poor, lying candidate, to lose:

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore. 

Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren't sure. 

One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we've seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%.

It's good news, no doubt, that the national disgrace known as today's Republican party has finally begun to embarrass a few of its former members into disassociating themselves from it. (Who me? Nope, never heard of 'em.) Clearly, though, its fundament remains: a party come to depend on ignorance, to nurture it like a babe in a manger; a party that's deliberately cultivated people of low information and rejection of reality, and has reinforced those traits with a propaganda network devoted exclusively to that end in order to sell a pre-failed and stale agenda, will not easily divest itself of hard-core denialists. Nor, as far as can be seen in their congressional activities since the election, do they even want to, even now.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, such a strong desire to see Rs regain their senses and reject their RWS™ and to recognize they've been played for fools by Fox and its paid hunchmen, that I'm deluding myself. But whereas they still have the votes in Congress to do great harm to America and its president, if they continue on their current path they'll be left, in less than a generation, with no supporters worth having. And will have self-destructed into irrelevance, a raving bunch of loonies for whom even the lunatic fringe is too close to reality.

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