The problem is, having no Reagan to guide it, the RNC is now back to being the party of Ford. Go along, get along, compromise, and whatever you do, let’s be genteel about it. Then we’ll have everyone retire to the smoking room for a jolly good time after.

To quote my English friends: BOLLOCKS.

Conservatives feared that if Hillary would have been elected, the ghost of Saul Alinsky would take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But thanks to Maverick and his lame campaign (yeah, Mav, way to go with how you took your one moment of unifying the base – the choice of Palin as Veep – and thoroughly destroyed it between the nomination and the election), we got far worse instead: a careful look at Obama’s road to the White House suggests to me that we got a black version of Lenin, schooled in the doublespeak and thuggery of Chicago politics.

Meanwhile, a man who is far past his political expiration date (Newt) complains that the RNC’s halfhearted attempt to “ask questions” is bad because it might look like we aren’t supporting our shiny new President in a tough time.

Again: BOLLOCKS.

Go along to get along political wimps like Maverick and Newt (at least this latest version of Newt, unlike the one we liked back in 1994) seem to be completely blind to the fact that when anyone *does* “ask questions” about Obama, he quickly reacts: first by stonewalling, followed by denial, then finally by tossing the culprit under the proverbial bus. Rather than be upset about Obama’s tried and true pattern here, we should be taking every advantage of it.

Newt, solutions are great. But tell me something: how many people get fired up and motivated by a policy wonk???

Newt trashes “opposition” here. All well and good, *if*, like Dems, that’s the only thing you are about. But Republicans of late have forgotten that the only way to attract the public’s attention to their solutions is to sometimes forcefully oppose the other party. Or put another way: why does negative campaigning work so well, when everyone seems to decry it?

Because it works. It gets people’s attention.

So for God’s sake, RNC, return to your roots and grow a pair. Follow Reagan’s success in taking the argument directly to the people, and do it constantly. Here’s a hint:

Issue: Obama pretends to be about Hope and Change™, but in reality, he’s a thug spawned by Daley and Alinsky, someone who leans to the far, far left. While claiming to be open and accountable, practically every choice Obama makes is shrouded in secrecy and tainted by the appearance of poor ethical choices, if not outright illegal behavior.

Opposition: Question *everything* that Obama does, which seems to run contrary to all the promises of openness and accountability that he ran on during the election season. Everything.

Solution: Remind Obama that playing legal wordsmithing games with his promises isn’t necessary if he actually keeps them, and is truly “above” the sleazeball tactics of his party and his base. Make him defend his every choice in the court of public opinion – or else allow him to dump one scapegoat after another, realizing that sometimes being the Opposition means that you eliminate your rivals in a war of attrition, when those rivals at lower levels are the true threat to your ability to enact policy.

Now get out of the damned country club, RNC, and grow a pair!!!

Wanderlust on December 16, 2008 at 4:57 PM

IlikedAUH2O on December 16, 2008 at 6:54 PM

Don’t forget that Bush (via Rumsfeld) was also taking on the DOD, which had withered after the eight year “procurement holiday” and massive infrastructure and manpower cuts made by the Clinton administration (anyone remember “can birds”?).

Bush’s mandate back then, following on his campaign promises, were twofold:

1) Eliminate “humanitarian” military operations as such, since the strategic purpose of such operations was either nonexistent or so lacking in focus as to be unsustainable from the perspective of advancing US national security interests (e.g., the disaster in Somalia and dithering in Bosnia).

2) Eliminate excess spending so that taxpayers could be provided with a significant stimulus similar to the one Reagan did during his first term, while trying to salvage the DOD from eight years of neglect.

The press eviscerated Bush through these efforts from day one, constantly bleating the tome that he had “no mandate” to govern, much less change things. He was positioned in the press as being out of touch with reality and incompetent – following on with the “lazy frat boy” meme the Dems fed the MSM during the election.

Some of Bush’s decisions were very unpopular, as were Rumsfeld’s, but one needs to remember the context of the time: the country was facing a the possibility of a massive recession due to the dot-bomb bust, which had let all the air out of the capital markets; and the staggering costs of salvaging a military infrastructure that had been underfunded and hacked to pieces for the previous eight years, all while having to sustain a very high ops tempo due to Clinton’s plethora of “humanitarian” missions all over the place.

Perhaps a good analogy of the time is this: imagine someone has just sold you a beautiful house, which looks gorgeous and rich on the outside…but when you walk into the front door, you discover that the walls are sagging, carpets are mildewed, and pipes and fixtures have been ripped off the walls. *That* was the condition of our Defense infrastructure when Bush took office in 2001.

I won’t even go into all the snafus left behind by the Gorelick Wall and a CIA that was so leftist as to be openly hostile to the incoming Administration.

Oh, and yes, when Bush took office, Energy was on the front pages, thanks to crappy deregulation in CA that was causing brownouts all over the place – some of which were self-inflicted by the utility companies to maximize spot prices.

By comparison, Bush leaves Obama with a country that is secure from outside threats and the DOD is healthy. If Obama wanted to, he could nix the bailout mania (one of Bush’s greatest failures, IMHO) and steer the country back to economic health by lowering taxes and encouraging investment in the capital markets. But that isn’t what Obama is about, and I believe the sky will sooner turn purple than see the possibility that Obama will become a supply-sider and follow in the footsteps of JFK in that regard.

/sigh

Wanderlust on December 16, 2008 at 7:33 PM