GOP's Worsening Civil War Could Wreck Its Chances for 2010 Comeback

Right-Wing Hard-Liners Both Inside and Outside the Party -- Including the Poobahs of Fox News and Talk Radio, as Well as the 'Teabaggers' -- Have Rendered the GOP Leadership Impotent and Hijacked the Party, Driving It So Far Rightward That It Cost the Republicans a Congressional Seat They Held For More Than 140 Years; Florida Is Likely Their Next Target


(Photo courtesy Craig Pendleton/University of Maine, Farmington)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. Thursday, November 12, 2009)

Abraham Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, who led the country through the Civil War, famously said that "A house divided against itself cannot stand." He was, of course, referring to the nation after the secession of 16 Southern states to the Confederacy.

But who would have thought that, nearly 150 years after he was elected president, Lincoln's words would apply to the very Republican Party he helped co-found in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854 with other anti-slavery expansion activists?

Today, as commentator Chris Sautter writes, the GOP bears no resemblance to the Party of Lincoln and is on the brink of being torn asunder in its own ideological civil war.

For copyright reasons, I cannot post Sautter's commentary in its entirety here on Zimbio. But I have been granted permission by his publisher to post it as a guest commentary on my blog site, The 'Skeeter Bites Report, which you can read at:

http://www.skeeterbitesreport.com/2009/11/right-wing-chickens-come-home-to-roost.html