My Dog Learns Better Than the GOP

Meet Nugget. Nugget is a two or three-year old pug. He's generally a good boy, but he has his moments where he's not as good. When he's not good, we yell at him. He gets upset that he was bad, and he stops being bad. Hence, I can say that Nugget is a good boy.

The GOP could learn a lot from my little Nugget. He has fun, he likes to enjoy himself, but when he's bad, he stops being bad. The Republican Party's response to their failings in the Bush Administration was to turn loose their craziest forces in the Tea Party. When they unleashed those crazies, they started rambling about "taking their country back" and the President being a Muslim. As the crazy talk about the President not being a resident went unanswered by the GOP base, they were more emboldened, and they pushed their 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, to adopt much of their crazy rhetoric. Mitt Romney, like John McCain before him, lost.

The GOP's activist wing pushed Romney too far to the right, and made an electable candidate into a loser. Much of the same thing happened to McCain, who selected Sarah Palin as his running-mate to appease those folks. One would think that after 2008 and 2012, the GOP may have tried to sound more reasonable this cycle. They did not. Now, they have Donald Trump beating down the gates for the nomination. They have Ted Cruz chasing him. Nobody else really has a chance to win the GOP nomination. After previously forcing two previously-labeled moderates to adopt crazy conservatism to win the nomination, now the GOP's base is demanding a nominee who is as nuts as them. Clearly, they learned nothing.

When my dog does something that doesn't turn out well for him, he usually stops doing it. It doesn't mean he doesn't want to do that bad thing, it means he knows it's a bad idea. In other words, he has some intelligent thoughts. That's more than I can say for sure about the GOP.