So New York Rep. Peter King goes on Bill Bennett's radio show the other day and openly talks about why the Republicans should hide their agenda from the American people ahead of the November elections:
GOP strategy should be "a combination of being against what Obama is for, and also giving certain specifics of what we are for," King told the Bill Bennett Radio Show. "Having said that, I don’t think we have to lay out a complete agenda, from top to bottom, because then we would have the national mainstream media jumping on every point trying to make that a campaign issue."
Let me get this straight... you don't wan to lay out your complete agenda because you are afraid certain aspects might become "campaign issues?"
Okay, it's not like I don't get a certain pragmatic reasoning there, but then it does seem to leave the open question: on what basis should voters be choosing Republicans, then?
Well, an easy answer would be those "certain specifics." Fine, but there seems to be something either fundamentally dishonest or utterly incompetent about that political strategy, possibly both...
Dishonest because... well, do I really have to spell that one out?
Incompetent because it exposes an assumption that the American electorate and their dirty fzcking hippy fellow travelers in the news media are incapable of looking at those "certain specifics," and asking the obvious question of "yeah, and...?"
What then Mr. Wizard?
But there's another level political incompetency here. Playing an obvious shell game with the American people will anger the very same teabagger base these people have been whipping up into a "full projectile pea soup, head spinning revolt" (much praise and thanks to the Mighty Digby for that one) against what they perceive is an emasculated, spineless, Republican establishment in Washington.
Will Cain, generally conservative wingnut, teabagger blogginista and commentator for FauxNews apparently hearts him some ideologues:
I cannot revere compromise; I cannot revere pragmatism; I long for ideologues..and there are not enough in the American political system. An ideologue is a devoted proponent of a consistent set of ideas. He may be a libertarian, a communist, a socialist, or a capitalist. You may disagree with him, but you will know what you are disagreeing with.
An ideologue does not bend to what is popular, what will gain him power, or what is practical. He simply does what he thinks is right.
The even more odious Jonah Goldberg recently exhorted his party to get past the "Party of No" label – although he did say it had been a good idea – and start to give an affirmative argument for voting Republican. "The Republican Party has rediscovered it's spine, but what good is a spine if you don't use it for something?" he writes.
Hey Jonah... you know what a spine is really good for? Letting the think-meat send instructions to the act-meat. Maybe the Republicans should think about using the spine for that... ya think?
Or don't... because right now, I think Democrats have a better than even money chance of keeping the House and the Senate, as long as they manage to not do something mind-numbingly dumb between now and November.
Yeah, I know ... I'm not taking that bet...
But even with that, at least the Democrats have a positive agenda and they have not been shy about letting people know what they want to do with the county, at least the parts they can agree on.
I think this whole thing is best demonstrated by the South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham push back of teabaggers at a public rally: "'What do you want to do? You take back your country -- and do what with it?'...Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent."
Rebellion is the easy part... having a coherent concept for what happens next, that's where the real work begins, and that's exactly the teabaggers problem. Bumper Sticker politics: their entire "ideology" (such as it is) is nothing that can't fit on a bumper sticker.
But what comes next? What are the next 10 words after you run out of space on the sticker? They don't have that answer, or if they do, they are at least self-aware enough to keep it to themselves, because on a certain fundamental level they understand they really are out of the mainstream of American political ideas, thought and philosophy.
So, King want's to play hide the sausage with the voters. Fine, that might fly with some, but his base is not going to put up with that, even if they don't have a real agenda for governing.
Stay tuned friends and neighbors, this is going to be fun to watch...
mojo sends
