George Voinovich Lashes Out Against Far Right GOP Extremists Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn

"Disgusting things you'd never anticipate"

We've asked it before-- and in the words of the B-52's-- who's to blame? Who's to blame for the downfall of the Republican Party? One might be tempted to say "the death" of the Republican Party, but history tells us that the Republicans will come back and that we'll look forward to that day as the Democrats descend into the dark bowels of the complete corruption that already dominates almost as much of it as has dominated the GOP for so long.

But respected Ohio senior Senator George Voinovich thinks he knows what has caused the temporary demise-- what and who-- at least for his own state of Ohio. He told the Columbus Dispatch “We got too many Jim DeMints (R-SC) and Tom Coburns (R-OK). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"

Can the same be said for GOP trouble around the country? In yesterday's NY Times, John Harwood contrasts the dwindling number of Republican moderates interested in goverance to the neo-Confederate fanatics interested in... wrecking government and preventing President Obama from having a successful presidency. Harwood askes us to behold "the slight, dour spokesman for orthodox Republicanism. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, leader of the shrunken Republican minority, will never be mistaken for a bodybuilder or a movie star"... or a moderate.

In his Southern-accented monotone, the Alabama native urges colleagues on Capitol Hill to block President Obama’s agenda and lower their sights toward incremental changes in health and energy policy. While Mr. Schwarzenegger exhorts the White House to “never give up,” Mr. McConnell criticizes the president’s push to “raise taxes in the middle of a recession” to cover those without insurance.

Six months after President George W. Bush left the stage, neither brand of Republicanism fares especially well with the public. But there is no doubt which holds more midsummer box-office appeal among the party faithful-- and it is not the Terminator’s.

Wingnut fanatics are livid, attacking Voinovich already and reminding everyone that he stopped one of Bush's most horrible appointments, clueless fascist dupe John Bolton. They much prefer slash and burn obstructionists like Coburn and DeMint, who, like them and their leader Rush Limbaugh, would rather see America fail than Obama succeed. Who's to blame? The B-52's are from Georgia, but unlike lunatic fringe politicians like Johnny Isakson, Newt Gingrich, Lynn Westmoreland, Tom Price, Jim Marshall, Jack Kingston, John Linder, John Barrow, Nathan Deal, Phil Gingrey, Saxby Chambliss and Paul Broun, they're not to blame.