Radicals Creating 'Ghastly Outdated Party'

With even top Republicans such as Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and Alan Simpson turning on the current crop of GOP candidates, "their crazed Reagan fixation," and their antiquated views on sex, gays, and more, it's becoming clear the GOP has become the "Ghastly Outdated Party," writes Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. "The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable, and insane candidate they can be," she writes. Any sign of reason becomes the focus of the next round of negative attacks.

"Republicans being against sex is not good,” she quotes one GOP strategist as saying. “Sex is popular.” That strategist says Republicans are going through the five stages of grief with their crop of candidates, and “we’re at No. 4,” he says, meaning depression. “We’ve still got one to go”—acceptance. Whereas once the GOP dreamed of taking the presidency and both houses of Congress this election season, now it faces the panic of "going down the drain with a loser." Republicans are "trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by," concludes Dowd. Click for the full column. (More Maureen Dowd stories.)