GOP - HAVE BECOME THE PARTY OF CRAZY! They are WAY BEYOND Conservative! Reagan would not be welcome in Today's GOP>

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/stop-calling-them-conservatives-new-gop-trump-cruz-party-nihilism?akid=14213.294211.fG-31a&rd=1&src=newsletter1055618&t=4

Not surprisingly, Boehner’s amusing assessment of Ted Cruz, whom he called a “miserable son of a bitch” and “Lucifer in the flesh,” made all of the media headlines.

But the former Speaker’s opinion of Cruz wasn’t even the most telling. That came when he mocked his party’s almost religious worship of former president Ronald Reagan, especially by the more radical members: “I love these knuckleheads talking about the party of Reagan. He would be the most moderate Republican elected today.”

Indeed he would be.

Of course, Reagan was by no means a moderate. He was a staunch conservative who led the way in union busting, weakening the safety net, slashing taxes for the very rich, and deregulating various industries. But he was not an extremist—or, perhaps a better word for today’s Republicans, a nihilist. Reagan did not view compromise as sinful or treasonous, as many of the so-called “conservatives” of today do. He did not believe in destructive scorched earth tactics, like shutting down the federal government or refusing to even consider judicial nominees for a sitting president. And he was not so extreme in his views that he couldn’t change his mind on important issues when confronted with new evidence. Just consider his shift on gun control.

Mike Lofgren, a Republican who worked in Washington for thirty years as a congressional aide, notably under current presidential candidate John Kasich, recounts in his book “The Party is Over” how the GOP went from being a traditionally conservative party to a radical right party:

By the 2000 election, and certainly after 9/11, the Republican party was no longer a conservative party in the traditional sense, as that word has been understood in Western political culture. Its belief in polarizing language and tactics, a militant and militarized foreign policy, and a constant search for moral enemies, foreign and domestic alike, qualifies the current GOP as a radical right-wing party, not a conservative one. In his flawed but occasionally insightful book Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, historian John Lukacs reminds us that “right wing” is not a synonym for conservative, and is not even a true variant of conservatism, although the right wing will opportunistically borrow conservative themes as the need arises. Hence, red is an appropriate color for a radical party like the present-day GOP.

The GOP’s degeneration into a party of extreme nihilists and egotistical showmen can be traced back to the ’90s, when Newt Gingrich virtually led the party as Speaker of the House. The former speaker was Ted Cruz’s spiritual predecessor, a loud, hypocritical, destructive, egomaniacal demagogue who relentlessly attacked President Clinton—who ended up signing some of Newt’s most reactionary legislation into law—over petty matters, including his sexual life. (Of course, Newt was a serial adulterer himself.)