The GOP decline starts Phase Two

http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/99418/The_GOP_decline_starts_Phase_Two

The GOP decline starts Phase Two
Bob Shrum

Republicans seem to be enjoying their August delirium and perhaps they should. For them, it only gets worse from here as the economy improves and Democrats ride growth—and their enactment of health care reform—into the midterm elections.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009


History does repeat itself—its central plot is recognizable even if the details of the drama are different. In a classic New Yorker cartoon of 1936, a gaggle of the affluent, including women in fashionable fur, stop outside a tony Manhattan residence where a tuxedoed butler is serving drinks. They tell their friends inside: "Come along. We're going to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt."

The legendary cartoonist Peter Arno perfectly captured the ideological frustration of the right wing as it watched an activist government, led by a president on course for a second electoral triumph, usher in economic recovery and major reform, including Social Security, which was enacted without a single Republican vote in the House. (Yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same: See this year's vote on the economic stimulus bill.)

In 2009, the hisses of the old plutocracy have escalated into the caterwauling of a manufactured mobocracy intent on shouting down members of Congress and fellow citizens who come to community centers to ask honest questions. The screamers have been summoned into battle by Limbaugh, Beck and assorted demagogues, whose own hate speech is abetted by prominent Republicans ranging from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to Newt Gingrich and the shameless Sarah Palin, with her despicable prevarication that the "evil" Obama health reform provides for a "death panel" with the power to deny care to her Down's Syndrome child.

Ironically, the lies and legions of the right reached fever pitch at the moment the news arrived that, once again, activist government is succeeding in the wake of free market failure on a scale not seen since the Great Depression. Despite predictions that unemployment would soar above ten percent, the rate instead fell for the first time in a year. There is now a near-consensus, except among doctrinaire true believers, that federal decisions from the bank bailouts to the stimulus package not only prevented economic catastrophe, but have begun to spark an economic revival.

snip//

The President and his party are already getting some credit in the most recent CNN poll. The stimulus package had pumped 100 billion dollars into the economy by the end of June, at a pace due to accelerate over the coming year. It has already saved a million jobs, according to analysts, and added a full percent to economic growth.

The other side senses the trend, so we can expect to see a rising tide of contrived and alternative explanations for recovery. But while the truth may be less important than ideology to Republican apologists, it does matter to the American people. And no expedient or tortured argument that Obama has had nothing to do with the recovery—or that it would have occurred regardless of White House policy—will persuade anyone outside Republican ranks.

Finally, the economic news should—and I believe will—embolden Democrats to pass health care reform worthy of the name. As the economy rises and mobocracy declines, Democrats will hold the high cards in the next congressional campaign. They will be rewarded for the stimulus they passed and for a health care bill they enacted despite the snarling gangs of August. America will be changed.

In 2010 and 2012, Democrats will not only win elections; they will achieve a political transformation—the Obama era, with progressive values ascendent. An addled, ideologically paralyzed Republican Party will be left to contemplate another famous Peter Arno cartoon, in which an airplane designer watches his jerry-built contraption go down in flames. "Well, back to the old drawing board," he says. The economy will recover. Until they go back to the drawing board, Republicans won't.

And Shrum has a history for being tactically foolish at times, but I think he is probably somewhere near accurate on this score.

will attempt another coup. It's in their DNA.

Just because one can't currently imagine how the conservatives could reposition or rebrand themselves and become the Party Resurgent doesn't mean it's not possible.

sheep into doing their bidding.

At Arlen Specter's town hall meeting just a few minutes ago, an old man stood up, trembling with rage, shook his bony finger in Specter's face and informed the senator that all he cared about was taking money from lobbyists.

See the irony here? I'm guessing most Republicans don't. The crowd cheered for this razor sharp analysis.

and now every Congresscritter, (D) or (R), is a target of their unfocused rage.

The RW talking heads, lobbying groups and PR companies actually thought they could control this monster once they started it up. Morans.

One would think there was nothing lower than Sarah Palin...really!

:kick:

I like this sentence: "federal decisions from the bank bailouts to the stimulus package not only prevented economic catastrophe, but have begun to spark an economic revival."

I wonder whether DU's "LET IT FAIL" contingent have anything to say about this. During the crisis, they were excoriating anyone who supported the bailout and stimulus as shills for Goldman Sachs.