Republican reformation is a fantasy.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

As I’ve written many times, the conventional view of what’s wrong with the GOP gets at only a portion of the truth. When The New York Times or Politico does such a story, the story inevitably focuses on policy positions. Immigration. Same-sex marriage. Climate change. Tinker with these positions, several sages are quoted as saying, and the GOP will be back in the game. 

God knows, policy positions are a problem. But they are not the problem. The problem is that the party is fanatical—a machine of rage, hate, and resentment. People are free to scoff and pretend it isn’t so, but I don’t think honest people can deny that we’ve never seen anything like this in the modern history of our country. There’s a symbiosis of malevolence between the extreme parts of the GOP base and Washington lawmakers, and it is destroying the Republican Party. That’s fine with me, although I am constantly mystified as to why it’s all right with the people I’m talking about. But it’s also destroying the country and our democratic institutions and processes, which is not fine with me. 

The party can change all the positions it wants, but until people stand up and yell “Stop!” to this fanaticism, it won’t mean anything. In fact, the problems feed into each other, because the idea that today’s Republican Party can change its stripes on same-sex marriage or immigration is absurd, and it is absurd precisely because of the rage and fanaticism I’m talking about, much of which is directed at brown people and gay people. Such a party cannot change its stripes on these issues until the mindset and world view are changed. 

What Tomasky is saying should be obvious to just about anyone.

The Republicans are not about to REALLY change, because they don't see that anything is broken.

All they want to change is the PERCEPTION of who they are in order to attract more voters, but not the FACT of who they are, which has increasingly become a party of racists, misogynists, homophobes, and supporters of big business.

And the introduction of the Tea Party wing has certainly not helped them, in that now the inmates are actually attempting to take control of the asylum.

The Right Wing fringe was great when they could simply be agitated about gay rights, gun control laws, or Roe vs Wade and then flock to the polls, but now that they want to try their hand at steering the ship the establishment GOP is looking for a way to keelhaul them before the Republican party runs aground permanently.

I would offer some advice to help but I am too busy unpacking my new popcorn popper.