The Republican party seems to have no clue as to what it is doing anymore.  I just read some posts on the GOP Facebook page that were full of anger and hatred towards a popular President and  towards anyone that even gave the appearance of disagreeing with them.  I also finished watching a new ad the GOP had put out, asking Americans if they feel safer 101 days into the Obama presidency.  The ad, of course, was full of dramatic and foreboding music and images of terrorists and burning buildings  - the main point being that Obama and the Democrats have opened the door to more attacks by not committing war crimes against detainees and by shaking hands with Hugo Chavez.  This is just silly.

Republicans are practically committing suicide on a national scale.  If they ever want to get back in power and be respectable again, they should do what everyone that screws up has to do - apologize and ask for forgiveness.  I know they have “apologized” for spending like mad during the Bush years and they claim to have reformed themselves, but no one believes that.  If they want to make amends the first thing they need to do is admit that the last eight years were a disaster and that they were largely at fault with President Bush.  The second thing is to stop trying to defend Bush era policies like torture; they are digging themselves into an ever-widening hole by continuing to defend that policy.  It does not matter how many memos and how much info they claim was found thanks to torture - it is still against the Geneva Convention and against U.S. law.  It is still a war crime and the punishment for war crimes still includes the death penalty.  Cut off Bush and the leadership of the past; by hanging on to their old ways they are doing nothing but delaying the inevitable.

I don’t expect that the GOP will ask for forgiveness and will stop defending the policies of the Bush administration, nor do I expect it to admit that it was wrong on a huge host of issues ranging from deregulation to foreign policy.  It is too stubborn for that and it will continue to pay the price.  You can argue about this, but in the end it is the truth.  The GOP is fading fast and the longer it clings to its hatred of the Obama administration and Democrats and the longer it continues to fight to protect war crimes because it happened under a president with an R next to his name, the faster it will disappear from the American political landscape.