Hopefully the dems will join them and we can have a mass funeral and burial of all of the sorry lot.
On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 5:56 AM, swamp fox <[email protected]> wrote: > > Republican Suicide may now well be America's favorite pastime: > Republican Suicide Watch. Its season is longer, its ramifications more > profound and Lord knows its principal players are at least as amusing > as any Super Bowl commercial. > http://buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/301 > Take, for instance, yesterday's spectacle of Senate Minority Leader > Mitch McConnell on CBS's "Face the Nation," in which Mitch said, yea, > verily, he actually said: "I think it may be time ... for the > president to kind of get ahold of these Democrats in the Senate and > the House ... and shake them a little bit and say, look, let's do this > the right way." > > He was of course referencing a Democratic president who, in a national > referendum that made all the papers, just crushed the living daylight > out of Republican ideology as a public-policy vehicle, not to mention > all those Senate and House Democrats who, district by district and > state after state, did roughly the same. > > But now, says Mitch, this Democratic president should grab his fellow > Dems by their majority necks and coerce them to undo what democracy > defines as the will of the people. > > > Don't get me wrong. I'm not romanticizing that will; sometimes its > expression is the last thing this country needs, as evidenced by other > 21st-century elections, which are better left unmentioned for now. > > > Even horrific outcomes, however, emphasize that elections do matter. > Thus it seems only fair that if those elections counted as the proper > and immutable will of the people, then perhaps this one should too? > > > Oh but sorry, say the Republicans. It doesn't -- indeed it shouldn't > -- really work that way. According to our playbook it's heads we win, > tails you lose. No matter how minor our minority position becomes, we > should always have equal settings at the table. > > Unquestionably the president brought some of this on himself. For > months, even years, he tutored us on the boundless upsides of > bipartisanship, promising a new kind of fuzzy-wuzzy politics in which > Platonic love and Socratic methodology would rule Washington. Turns > out, though, it might have been better had he been a trifle more > precise. > > > For as the Washington Post reports this morning, those who have known > Barack Obama best say that his mantra of "fixing 'broken politics' is > less about making concessions just for the sake of finding common > ground and more about elevating the debate -- replacing cynical > gamesmanship and immature name-calling with intellectually honest > arguments and respect for the other side's motives." > > > In short: polite political hegemony. > > > Which, as I said, is only fair, since elections, as the democratic > expression of the people's shifting will, are supposed to matter. > > > As for Obama's expectations of "intellectually honest arguments" and > the opposition's respectful "motives"? > > > Well now, there are two variables of unplumbable wretchedness. > > > From the Politico, let us quote: "Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the > chairman of the Republican Conference whose office organized [a just- > completed] three-day [strategizing] retreat, kicked off the final > dinner with a clip of George C. Scott as Gen. Patton imploring his > troops, 'We're going to kick the hell out of (the enemy) all the time, > and we're going to go through him like crap through a goose.'" > > > And there was this from the intellectually honest Eric Cantor, the > House Republican whip: "I know all of you are pumped about the > [stimulus-package] vote the other day. We'll have more to come." > > > Honest, no doubt. But intellectual? > > > To what extent this sort of unthinking, unbecoming obstructionism > actually derails the people's will remains to be seen. But it does > leave one perplexed, given that "it" appears to be the GOP's chosen > path -- after a three-day strategy session, no less -- to a return to > majority power. > > > As the Post's David Broder observed more than a month ago: "[C] > ongressional Republicans ... shrunken ranks are increasingly dominated > by right-wing Southerners who care not what their stance does to harm > the party's national image." > > > Yep, that's what Broder wrote then and virtually every other prominent > columnist with the exception of the now-underemployed Bill Kristol > has > written since. As conventional wisdom goes, it's profoundly wise, even > if mammothly conventional. > > > So when the party's new chairman, Michael Steele, announced last week > to his fellow Republicans that his first task would be to address > their "image" problem, was he sufficiently aware of just who his > fellow Republicans are, and, with respect to the 2010 election, what > they're up to? > > > Because these jokers are becoming political jokes, real fast -- and > there's nothing more politically suicidal than that. > > > > > > -- *~@):~{> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
