That confusion reign at the heart of the GOP is now indisputable. One only has to look at this weekend’s CPAC. The party of Lincoln and Roosevelt and not so long ago the party of government is fast descending into fringe condescension and has as it's standard bearers two narcissistic opportunists. In Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, the sole rationale for being conservative, it would seem, is to cream whatever financial rewards they can through the authorship of badly written compilations passed off as books or badly mouthed and bigoted pronouncements touted as radio broadcasting; both Rush and Ann are doing very well financially on the backs of a people who do not seem capable of distinguishing fact from fiction. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are the clearest manifestation that the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum.
The GOP already beaten once by President Obama during the election, seem to want to commit hara-kiri by taking that fabled and entrenched dogma of “we still know best, we have absolutely no need to change and we lost because we gave up on our extreme right wing ideology”. The message coming from them is so confused that you have their new Chairman Michael Steele, apologized that the American people had every right not to believe anything they said. But in the same breath he touted and echoed their penchant for tax cuts ubber alles in debating a very transformational President whose popularity still appear stratospheric.
One would have thought that, after losing to President Obama despite the play on “Conservatives holding on to religion and guns ....” statement by the then candidate Obama and the much looped Reverend Wright’s “God damn America” controversies, the GOP would have formulated a different strategy of response and tactic of execution. Instead they have resorted to confused, misdirected and rudderless rabble rousing.
Take for instance the new line of attack by that most hypocritical of the so-called conservatives, Newt Gingrich’s attempt to link and lump President Obama in with President Bush for the current economic crises. Unless Mr. Gingrich believes that the American is the most stupid person on God’s Earth, how could he possibly make that association in the expectation that less than two months into his Presidency, the American people would have forgotten who brought onto them the current wrath of a very displeased economic GOD. And herein lies the absolutely impossible task that the GOP has to deal with; talk about the government’s lack of fiscal responsibility when they presided over the biggest deficit in the nations recent history is not convincing; talk of over burdening future generations when they spent their way through the nations treasures without so much as a monument built in commemoration, except for corruption and the numbers of new graves for the Brave young men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to uphold the honor of their beloved nation on a distant shore sounds hollow and hypocritical; talk of bad economics when they created the conditions for the festering of the depression malaise that a very new and young administration has to grapple with even before it had taken office sounds disingenuous; talk of diminishing America prestige and influence when they have the dubious honor of their great leader being the only American President to have been ‘shoed’ by a foreign journalist when he was the guest of those journalists sounds farcical.
So the GOP is looking forward to when President Obama’s policies fail so that they can blame him and his party for the failure. Now let us look at how serious a challenge that may prove for the GOP to exploit more than for President Obama to explain. How does ending the war in Iraq render the President to criticism if that country descended into anarchy after the drawdown on US troops when he has already directed with ample notice period that the troops be brought home and only a non combatant compliment is retained and which would leave by a fixed deadline? It will only ‘fail’ if the Iraqis cannot look after themselves. But how does the failure of a democratically elected Iraqi government become the responsibility of a US Administration? Besides, the GOP likes his plan. It is just about the only thing they agree with him on.
Afghanistan as a coalition effort mandated by the UN and NATO is not the direct responsibility of President Obama although he has sought to highlight the dangers of ignoring that campaign for far too long. In fact, any failure there will be a vindication of his long standing complaint that too much focus went unnecessarily onto Iraq. And coalition partners in Afghanistan were not imposed upon to pull their weight.
The case of the US economy presents the worst case scenario for the GOP even more so than the rest of the litmus issues already described. Tax cuts for the middle classes, unemployment benefits and insurance for those who have lost their jobs, a foreclosure stay of execution for those struggling with their mortgages, health insurance for over eleven million children, the biggest reconstruction agenda for a generation, improvements for education, investments in alternative energy, assistance to States struggling as a result of the deep recession... etc.
Now let’s assume that no jobs are created at all (and that is quite some assumption) and the unemployment rate remains as is in 3 years hence. People would still see improvements in bridges and the road infrastructure, they will notice better classrooms and paid teachers, improvements in environmental awareness and steps to address them, a dramatic fall in the numbers of US Soldiers stationed abroad, a reduction in their tours of duty and their involvement in "dumb wars". The people still struggling for employment will be able to stay in their own homes and thereby have roofs over their heads and will be able to get sick without being bankrupt. Those still in employment, especially the middle classes, will still enjoy a reasonable standard of living and not see hikes in their levels of taxation. Since a lot of the jobs currently being lost are in GOP afflicted areas, a lot of ‘former’ GOP voters will come to appreciate the assistance they will be receiving from this so called and much maligned ‘Socialist’ government and may even decide that that type of ‘Socialism' may not be all that bad. Why? Because they would remember that this current President inherited all the issues from a GOP President. Most importantly, they will also remember that those aspects of policy that helps to ease their pain were passed without a single GOP support in the House and only three GOP Senators were brave enough to cross party lines despite a sterling effort by President Obama to be bi-partisan.
If there is a GOP GOD in existence it must know that 2012 will not be a GOP year. That will be when the real fruits of all this stimuli starts to really kick-in. And witnessing the disarray in which the GOP finds itself, it will take them more than three terms to get another look in; look at what happened to the British Conservative Party after Maggie Thatcher. The GOP’s redemption would be on the basis that it remodeled itself on a successful and winning formula; that of the Democrats and the GOP agenda then will be to portray themselves as the best placed to carry out the legacy of Obama. Now will that not be a turn for the books?
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