The Decline of the Republican Party: Unfortunately, they brought it upon themselves

People wondered upon the inauguration of Barack Obama just how long his honeymoon would last. Somewhat surprising to me, in a good way, was just how short the honeymoon was, and how our tame-by-most-standards mainstream media stopped the incessant romanticism fairly quickly and got back to business as usual.

While I readily admit a station like MSNBC's liberal posturing, I find the outcry of conservatives to be pathetically defensive. My God, the whole Republican party has adopted Rush Limbaugh as their man, the talking head who will lead the way - at least ideologically - as the party moves forward after such a decisive blow from voters last November.

In a Daily Illini opinion column called McRight by some chick in the College of Business, a meant-to-be humorous column about how crappy February is resorted to pathetic name calling. After establishing her view that the word "February" is synonymous with "ugly" and "terrible", she said that Michelle Obama looked, well, "February", at the inauguration.

This coming from a writer who, suffice to say voted for Bush in 2004, seems to be a bit ironic. Let's hypothetically say I decided to stoop to low-brow humor and note how Laura Bush was as vanilla looking of a First Lady we've had since Lady Bird Johnson - let's just say I hypothetically made that comparison - and you see how lame of a one-liner her put-off of our First Lady is.

I'm not someone who enjoys political correctness, but as a man looking at Michelle Obama as a woman, ugly is not what comes to mind. I guarantee a good number of readers saw that one-liner and felt racism creeping into the column. McRight - you aren't doing your fellow conservatives any McFavors with that kind of crap. Perceived racism, ignorance, or just a lame attempt at a joke? Check, check, and check.

It just shows how out of touch the Republican party is. Take, for instance, how disastrous McCain's campaign was. He is a politician to be respected, and has years of service both in the military and congress that proves the kind of man he is. He wasn't being himself the whole campaign - he instead followed the bad advice of the most incompetent campaign staff since McGovern (sorry, Hillary) and spent more time talking about Obama than himself.

For the sake of governance, I really wish the Republican party would get their act together. The basic ideals of conservatism are still important to have in political discourse, but instead of worrying about furthering their message, they waste away their energy complaining about the "Liberal media", Reverend Wright, and how bad of a deal Bush got when 85% of Americans didn't approve of his job.

Though, I think I've heard that Gallup dude was a socialist . . . so, I bet those numbers are rigged. That pesky Liberal bias.