New GOP just like Old GOP: Of 'gaseous rhetoric' and other noxious smells

Watching the Tea Party die a slow death takes me back to our era of Free Love. Great times of in-your-face, bra-waving, van rockin' wild orgy sexual freedom looks and sounds a lot like Tea Party in-your-face, English-mangled sign waving, race baitin' wild flirtations with unfounded conspiracies and stupidity.

Yup, it's all fun and freedom until you've got exploding rates of STDs, this new thing called AIDS and kids running around named Rainbow, Sunshine and Unicorn (that latter I'm presuming is the boy). As a cultural movement, the Tea Party offered even more downsides with its clinging to blatant racism, Second Amendment remedies and all manner of rape lunacy. Sure the Summer of Love was tons more fun than our adventures in Tea Party astroturf but both faced a common threat -- reality.

Now the GOP, which previously welcomed the young insurgency supposedly under the watchful eye of trusted stalwart Dick Armey, is stuck with the stench of burned tea after losing an election that was only theirs to lose. And they're working hard to figure out what went wrong with the most well-funded campaign ever waged in the most low rent manner possible.

The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky notices the lack of genuine effort on the GOP's part. "Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio recently laid out a vision for the GOP’s future," he writes. "Too bad it shows Republicans have learned nothing at all from their historic trouncing on Election Day."

Despite upholstering their speeches with ample liberal rhetoric ... Rubio and Ryan both stuck hard to current-day GOP gospel. Raising tax rates isn’t an option. Relying on government isn’t the answer, and all the rest. ... But it was only about messaging. The substance of their positions, to them, is fine and dandy.

Neither they nor the people they’re talking to are ready to accept that they’ve been wrong about anything except messaging, and until they are, this is just gaseous rhetoric.

A USA Today editorial demonstrates how ineffective the GOP has been in matching action to its newfound rhetoric. The party's failure to meaningfully recalibrate after last month's election losses sent the GOP over the reality cliff when the usually sober Senate Republicans voted down the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in a move that "reflected the continuing influence of a fringe that gets frantic about anything involving the United Nations," the paper wrote.

The most stunning example of the New GOP's thinking remaining as muddled and convoluted as the Old GOP's came from the Senate floor in the name of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who effectively filibustered his own bluff when it was called out by Harry Reid. The Clown Car of Crazy was so bizarre, it gave Sen. Claire McCaskill, attempting to preside over the Republican asylum, a mild case of whiplash.

“This may be a moment in Senate history, when a senator made a proposal that, when given an opportunity for a vote on that proposal, filibustered his own proposal. I don’t think this has ever happened before,” quipped Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin in the wake of the fiasco.