Now that Hillary's big mouth has ended any dim hope she might have had to even be considered as Vice President, let alone President, the amusing game of watching the struggle for the Democratic nomination is over. All the mayhem and vituperation is receding and the ebbing tide of conflict is leaving any of us who still consider ourselves Republicans with a ghastly prospect.
Today's International Herald Tribune has an article entitled 'Some Republicans Sense Disorder In The McCain Campaign' (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/25/america/campaign.php). This article could have been written a year ago when McLame's giant, overfunded monstrosity of a campaign for the nomination foundered on the rocks of Republican base rage against his Amnesty Bill and from his sheer managerial incompetence. Only the total ineptitude of his opponents and McLame's support by the inside-the-beltway political hacks saved his scrawny neck and allowed the cranky old duffer to gain the nomination by winning thin pluralities in two or three primaries. But if McLame and the Republican hacks are counting on blue collar whites to throw a racist hissy-fit and vote for the party who are now seen as the authors of all this country's problems they are living in a dream world. Instead of sniveling about their 'broken brand', a marketing term worthy of the contemptible hacks they have become, the Republicans should 're-brand' themselves like any failing enterprise.
"We're the Republicans and we want to solve the oil crisis by drilling for oil!"
How does that sound?
"We're the Republicans and we want to build nuclear power plants to meet America's electricity needs in a way we can afford!"
Simple, understandable.
"We're the Republicans. The Democrats have opposed sane energy policies for the last thirty years and we're here to say that the country has got to change direction before things get a whole lot worse!"
Have we got your attention?
"We're the Republicans. Running from the Middle East like a bunch of whipped little sissies will hand control of the world's energy supplies to our enemies, destroy any respect we have in the world and lead to the deaths of millions of people who trusted us and worked with us to fight the War On Terror."
Bring the war to the enemy. Stop cowering. Its Bush's accommodation to liberalism which is the problem and the cure is NOT more liberalism.
People have been calling the Republican Party the 'stupid party'. Thats an insult to the Democrats who have been the originators of every stupid, destructive idea that has stalked this land for the last half-century and who should hold that title permanently. The Republicans arent even coherent enough these days to be called either 'stupid' or a 'party'. The time serving hacks who make up the leadership have been so corrupted by their 1994-2006 control of the legislature and eight-year control of the White House that they have forgotten that this is a democracy and that occasionally even the most powerful politician is called upon to explain himself to the people who elected him. The great divide, the day the Inside-The-Beltway establishment broke from their base was the day President Bush and the Congress tried to sneak the McLame-Kennedy Amnesty Bill under the radar and into law without any public debate. Thats when they labeled themselves as true Enemies Of The People. The fact that every single Democratic legislator supported it doesnt lessen the sin of the President and The Maverick who were pushing a bill to gain cheap labor for their cronies and who were nursing the hallucination that somehow these exploited poor people would instantly become Grateful Republican voters. In the campaign for the nomination which followed no Republican stood up, pointed their finger at McLame and screamed, "this guy wrote the bill which gave the Mexican Government the power to veto us building a fence along our border, the bill which adds twenty million people to the Food Stamp, Social Security and welfare rolls,the bill which gives drivers licenses and motor-voter registration cards to every foreigner who wants them!" No Republican has EVER stood up and pointed to the Democrats and accused them of supporting flooding this country with illegal aliens and setting up a free-for-all medical care system which puts YOU in the same line at the Federal Clinic as anybody who can sneak across the border and leaves YOU to foot the bill from your payroll, excise and property taxes, basically using taxes on the Middle Class to subsidize employers who are too cheap to provide medical coverage to their underpaid helots. Who is speaking for the working people in this country as the Democrats talk about further hamstringing the energy companies with new taxes and regulations while they pour hundreds of billions into the 'alternative energy' rathole?
NOT THE REPUBLICANS thats for sure.
The Dems and the enviro-kooks have managed to put the overpopulated Polar Bear on the Endangered Species list even as they breed like rats on the expanding polar ice cap but the real endangered species are Republicans. They cant even hold on to seats in Congress that they have held for fifty years. Like the Wooly Mammoth their reason to exist has disappeared and we await this November's slaughter at the hands of the Socialist Cro-Magnons.