Logical Fallacies

http://www.truthout.org/witnessing-death-republican-party/1330698232

This article, arguing against the Republican Party and its ability to stay relevant in politics, contains a few logical fallacies. The major fallacies used are the hasty generalization and the slippery slope. In using Rick Santorum’s super-conservative agenda to characterize the entire Republican Party as a group of “right-wing nuts”, the author is demonstrating a hasty generalization. One party member does not represent the entire party as a whole. The author also makes a very bold jump from first criticizing the Republican Party candidates today as radicals to then stating that this will inevitably lead to the death of the Republican Party, at least in its ability to win a national election. The ability of the Republican Party to compete for presidential positions in the future really is not dependent on the group of party members running today (and, as was shown with the hasty generalization, it is really not correct to label all of the party members even of today as incapable of contending). Aside from this, the very statement that the Republican Party may be dying is fallacious, since so many of the past elections between the two major parties have been so tight, and since there is such a large base of Republican citizens that it is questionable to state that the party will die with such ease.