A question of relevancy

There has been much gnashing of teeth because a day after former President Jimmy Carter announced that he had brain cancer, republican Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz took the opportunity to criticize the Carter administration and compare it to President Obama's administration.  While it is pretty much par for the course for today's republican party to show a complete lack of tact (and especially Ted Cruz), I think the episode is very telling as to the biggest problem endemic to their party today:  relevancy.

Jimmy Carter was President more than thirty-five years ago--the changes to our world in that time have been epic.  This apparently has gone over the head of most republicans--probably because arguments about the past are all they have left.  The future is lost to them already.  Frankly, the only Americans alive today who remember the Carter administration are people in their sixties, one of the few remaining voting blocs in this country that republicans can claim.  Further, I would be willing to bet it hasn't gone unnoticed by the Hillary Clinton campaign that Sen. Cruz managed to skip over her husband's administration in his critique.  It's not easy to criticize successful ones, now is it?

Ted Cruz's comments concerning the Carter administration may well have been tasteless in light of the former President's cancer treatment, but they were most assuredly irrelevant, and that will be even bigger problem for the republican party heading into November of 2016 than their overall crassness.

Peace,
emaycee