Jim Bunning: Symbolic of Today's Republican Party

Mr. Bunning is known on Capitol Hill for gruffly blowing past reporters and colleagues in hallways and for cranky outbursts at his staff. “He is perceived as being out-of-touch, hot-headed and generally counterproductive,” said Phil Musser, a Republican consultant and former official in the Bush administration.

The story of Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky provides us with a great snapshot of the current state of the national GOP.  That is, pathetic and getting worse.

It is thought by many in Washington that Bunning is suffering from some form of dementia: his party leadership is basically pleading with him to not run for reelection next year, and in general he is an embarrassment to the Senate as an institution.

Way to go Kentucky voters!  Good job Republican party!!

I mean, how long can a party survive by electing utterly incompetent, lazy guys like George W. Bush and Jim Bunning?  These are the types of idiots who have a difficult time walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Let's see: you've got a morbidly obese, drug-addled, racist, sexist and in general hatefully divisive Rush Limbaugh as the party's de-facto national leader; a eunoch, green, Uncle Tom/empty suit lightweight head of the Republican National Committee in Michael Steele, and just ran the most comically inept politician in American poltical history as your VP candidate in the last presidential election in Sarah Palin.

Oh--and throw in the fact that the party has no ideas and is proposing no solutions to any of the nation's ills beyond hoping that Obama fails...

Mix all that together and you've got one toxic political stew.  The GOP is hurtling unabated towards political irrelevance as a white, southern regional party.  Think Jim Bunning and Rush Limbaugh....