GOP Clusterfark--Contagious Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome Spreads

The ghost of Douglas Bruce lingers on.

Don Marostica, Scott Renfroe, Dave Schultheis--Ben DeGrow follows up on these "has beens" and "losers" (Marostica's words, not Ben's), and applies the proper treatment.

Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi also takes these tools to the woodshed:

There is really no way around it: The Republican Party, no matter how many fresh or smart ideas it may have, isn’t going to get anywhere in this state — or nationally — if it continues to spew the hateful gibberish we’ve heard from Scott Renfroe and Dave Schultheis the past couple of days.

It’s not even a matter of their opposition to particular bills (one regarding the extension of health benefits to same-sex domestic partners and another one regarding HIV testing) or even the ruthlessly absurd arguments they offer in defense of their positions. It is about common decency and empathy. Either these two are unable to articulate a viewpoint without injecting some twisted lesson they learned at 12, or they aren’t smart enough to know when to keep quiet. Either way, the Republicans should do all they can to condemn them.
. . .
Are these the words of a person who should be representing anyone?

The Republican Party has to get rid of these people, pronto. They aren’t conservatives; they’re nihilists. Can anyone imagine a Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater claiming that a child should live with AIDS to teach the mother a lesson? (If that is what Schultheis meant. And I still hold out a slim amount of hope that this was a matter of incoherence.)

Republican majority leader Josh Penry can’t win. If he dictates to his membership what they should be saying, the Left will feed on it and accuse Penry of pulling puppet strings. If he doesn’t control them, however, you will be left with the barbarian wing of the party dominating news cycles. Republicans can’t afford it anymore.

The GOP is already mired in a three-cycle struggle in the wilderness. Continue this type of rhetoric, and it will mean forty years in the desert (a reference for those legislators prone to Biblical allusions).

There are cogent arguments for any number of issues that don't call for resorting to the type of inane, sloppy, and often incoherent rhetoric on display by these legislators in just this past week. This isn't mere soundbite, "gotcha" stuff either.

If the GOP can't argue with decorum and a modicum of decency and respect, in spite of often unbridgeable differences with the opposition, how can we expect the left to do the same?

Someone order the GOP delegation a stack of Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends and Influence People" stat!