Is the GOP facing the end of times?

Mike Bradley spoke the other day at a book event I had the pleasure to attend. Mike represents Publishers’ Workshop an informal group that puts on seminars for authors-to-be and soon to be published writers who are finding the ways of the publishing world a bit daunting.  But during his remarks, Mike said something that was so profound. “We are at a crossroads in publishing. There are many of the old school who wish to see the democratic principals of the Internet destroyed and a return to the old ways and a rise in power of the old gatekeepers. They wish to control things as they once did. They do not realize that Pandora’s box has been opened and we can never go back. Their days are numbered.”

As I thought about Mike’s comments I realized they ran parallel with what is going on in Washington, D.C.   The GOP is in fear of the future. They realize that the generation following us does not hold to the values they do. They do not believe in the “old ways”. And this scares the Republicans more than anything. They now know they are dinosaurs and that their time is limited. They have lost the fight.

They thought they had won the big election. And they should have ‑ by a landslide. The economy was in the toilet and the tax revolting Tea Partiers were louder than ever; yet, they stood on issues, which America refused to follow. They were and are out of step with a changing America. Their Pandora’s box has been opened and no matter how hard they try then can never get everything back in and close the lid again. (And this, just a few years after Karl Rove predicted that the Republicans would rule from the White House for generations to come. Sorry Karl.)

This is why Washington is in such a mess right now. The GOP is trying to hold on to the last bit of the continent they can. They are clawing with dull nails into the slippery slope of obsolesce and trying to survive. That means they will lash out at anything. They have made a mockery of the investigation of safety at Benghazi (which was the purported reason for holding the hearings to begin with) and they have grasped at straws trying to link the President with any number of issues from the IRS investigation of Tea Party groups to the FBI taking AP phone numbers for an investigation into a national security breech. So far they have found NO smoking gun. Nothing they can link the President to in order to impeach him. And for that matter, nothing to slow the swell behind Hillary’s potential run for the oval office.

But they have made a lot of noise. I am sure in the final days of the dinosaurs there was much noise and trashing about. The Republicans are trying anything they can to maintain a presence. They are trying anything they can to survive. Anything except the one thing that would save them: change. Change with the times and the new landscape that faces them, but they will not. Not with the party leadership as it stands now. They are too entrenched in the “old ways.”

So do not be mislead by the roars coming from D.C. It is only the wailing of a dying breed.