On May 16, 5:59=A0pm, Amanda Williams <p...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
>
> Peggy Noonan
>
> The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The
> Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting,
> they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will
> leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then
> hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You
see
> it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.
>
> The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate
> light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in
> the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.
>
> The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans
> Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing
> the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first
> thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second
thought:
> Most party leaders in Wa****ngton are stupid =96 detached, played out,
stuc=
k
> in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or
> '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics
> especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came
> back to Alger Hiss.
>
> They are also =96 Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers =96
successful,
> well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in '86, how
> government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to
make
> a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence
> detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're
> safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way.
>
> Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past
seven
> years in the White House. But they've publicly sup****ted it so long they
> think they . . . sup****t it. They get confused. Late at night they toss
> and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in
> McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what
> those thoughts imply.
>
> And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have
> the country, the troops will rally in the fall.
>
> "This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan,
who
> is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York
> Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our
> issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be
> conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be
> conservative every day.
>
> The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through
> '08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running
> for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for
> anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers.
>
> All true enough!
>
> But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately,
> that there is another truth. "Members and pundits . . . fail to
> understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas
> prices, the economy, foreclosures," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a
> 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.
>
> The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a
> mountain." Analyses of its predicament reflect an "investment in the
Bush
> presidency," but "the public has just moved so far past that." "Our
> leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case
> of White House-itis." Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in
> terms of communications: "He can't articulate. The only asset we have
now
> is the big microphone, and he swallowed it." The party, said Mr. Davis,
> must admit its predicament, act independently of the White House, and
> force Democrats to define themselves. "They should have some owner****p
> for what's going on. They control the budget. They pay no price. . . .
> Obama has all happy talk, but it's from 30,000 feet. Energy,
immigration,
> what is he gonna do?"
>
> * * *
>
> Could the party pivot from the president? I spoke this week to Clarke
> Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent
> Republicanism in the South. When he started out, in the 1950s, there
were
> no Republicans in his state. The solid south was solidly Democratic, and
> Sen. James O. Eastland was thumping the breast pocket of his suit,
vowing
> that civil rights legislation would never leave it. "We're going to
build
> a two-party system in the south," Mr. Reed said. He helped create "the
> illusion of Southern power" as a friend put it, with the creation of the
> Southern Republican Chairman's Association. "If you build it they will
> come." They did.
>
> There are always "lots of excuses," Mr. Reed said of the
special-election
> loss. Poor candidate, local factors. "Having said all that," he
> continued, "let's just face it: It's not a good time." He meant to be a
> Republican. "They brought Cheney in, and that was a mistake." He cited
"a
> disenchantment with the generic Republican label, which we always
thought
> was the Good Housekeeping seal."
>
> What's behind it? "American people just won't take a long war. Just =96
> name me a war, even in a pro-military state like this. It's overall
> disappointment. It's national. No leader****p, adrift. Things haven't
> worked." The future lies in rebuilding locally, not being "distracted"
by
> Wa****ngton.
>
> Is the Republican solid South over?
>
> "Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "I eat lunch every day at Buck's Cafe. Obama's
> picture is all over the wall."
>
> How to come back? "The basic old conservative principles haven't
changed.
> We got distracted by Wa****ngton, we got distracted from having good
> county organizations."
>
> Should the party attempt to break with Mr. Bush? Mr. Reed said he
> sup****ts the president. And then he said, simply, "We're past that."
>
> We're past that time.
>
> Mr. Reed said he was "short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic." He
> has seen a lot of history. "After Goldwater in '64 we said, 'Let's get
> practical.' So we got ol' Dick. We got through Watergate. Been through a
> lot. We've had success a long time."
>
> Throughout the interview this was a Reed refrain: "We got through that."
> We got through Watergate and Vietnam and changes large and small.
>
> He was holding high the flag, but his refrain implicitly compared the
> current moment to disaster.
>
> What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what
> didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could
> have broken, on principle, with the administration =96 over the thinking
> behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and
> the size of government =96 has passed. What two years ago would have
been
> honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.
>
> Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has
> the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious
> reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the
> president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they
> wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the
> language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are
> marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about
> ideas. And not serious about leader****p, only follower****p.
>
> This is and will be the great challenge for John McCain: The Democratic
> argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory
> will yield nothing more or less than George Bush's third term.
>
> That is going to be powerful, and it is going to get out the vote. And
> not for Republicans.
>
> -----
>
> It's all very sad, isn't it ?
>
> <snicker>
>
> --
> AW
>
> <small but dangerous>
The GOP Cocksuckers are losing because their entire reelection effort
is built on the Politics of Resentment. "You are being picked on, just
like me," they scream. "Send me to Wa****ngton and I'll piss THEM off
for a change."
So lots of them went to Wa****ngton. And everyone found out that while
the Politics of Resentment might be good for winning elections, it's
useless for actually GOVERNING and getting things done. Take a look
what we have twenty years later: Over 4,000 dead kids for nothing;
declared war on the wrong country; half a trillion dollars of tax
money wasted; a major American city STILL not rebuilt three years
later; the promotion of cronies and incompetents who can't admit their
****ups but prefer to blame them on somebody else.
The loss of the Illinois 16th a couple of months ago scared them all
right, but it was the loss of the Mississippi 1st that REALLY scared
them because they tried to link the guy who won to a 'NIGGER.' In the
SOUTH! And he STILL won while [gasp!] the GOP Cocksuckers got laughed
at.
No one but the 19 percenters believes these incompetent assholes
anymore.
That's the simplest reason why you are going to lose the White House.
And there is nothing you can do about it.
S. Olson
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