The Republican Party has completely transformed into the Party of Paul.

Remember the outrage over Steele’s “gaffe” last week regarding Afghanistan? There was some initial outrage which quickly died out only to be replaced with words of support. Brietbart’s Big Peace site posted this today: Learning From Our Mistakes: Nation-Building Follies and Afghanistan (via google)

Foreign policy, like domestic politics, is the art of the possible. Containing and weakening al Qaeda may be possible, but building Afghanistan into a modern, democratic country is not. The increasingly evident failures of nation–building in Bosnia and Iraq—both of which were more promising candidates than Afghanistan—should have taught us that lesson.

Nobody in the comments is outraged. Hot Air linked to it without any commenters objecting. There will continue to be debate within Republican circles for a little while but I think it’s clear that the Republicans have decided in favor of Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan’s isolationism over Bush’s adventurism. Even discussion of Iraq as a failure is now mainstream among conservatives.

Conspiracy theories, Birch Society, racism, isolationism, Austrian economics, Gold standard, anti-government militias, and even Alex Jones are all now mainstream and acceptable within the right wing.

I don’t think there’s any doubt left that the Paulians have managed to completely take over the Republican party. Those of us who started to notice this a while back caught a lot of shit here on LGF over the prediction that this could possibly happen. I’m as shocked as anybody that they really pulled it off.

Game Over.