Why the GOP Is Going Down While Seeming to Go Up

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By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

It's like watching someone being sucked down into quicksand. I'm referring to the sad, desperate struggle of the Republican Party to try to resurrect its electoral fortunes by championing the exact same policies that took them to embarrassing defeat in the Obama/Democratic landslide. By their actions, it's plain they got nuthin'.

Nothin' except to flail about in self-destructive obstructionism, basically in temper-tantrum mode. If we can't be victorious, they seem to be telling the Democrats (and, by extension, the country), we'll make sure you go down with us. This kind of schoolboy behavior is rolled out at a time in American history when the country's financial and governmental institutions are close to free-fall catastrophe unless some drastic corrective action is taken.

But, even when considering the necessity for an immediate and massive economic -stimulus package, they can't seem to help themselves from playing their failing hand of old-style political gamesmanship.

The Senate's "compromise" economic-recovery bill that is likely to pass is about 50% tax cuts, which do little to create jobs in the near-future. The Republicans forced drastic cuts of all-important stimulus funds for cash-strapped state and city governments to start shovel-ready infrastructure projects -- ones that would quickly put spendable cash into the hands of poor and urban middle-class citizens. Meanwhile, they made sure to insert even more funds and tax breaks for the better-off elements of society.

Again, the Republicans aren't trying to hide where their priorities are: with the very wealthy and large banks and corporations; the rest of the population will just have to muddle through on their own.

TACKING RIGHT

How Obama and the Democrats will respond to the GOP obstructionism in crafting the final stimulus bill in the House/Senate Conference Committee will tell us a lot about the hope for significant change in the next four years. Given the desire of Obama and the fight-averse Democratic leadership to play nice with the Republicans, in order to be able to claim "bipartisan" support for the stimulus package and other important legislative initiatives, the picture doesn't look good for the kind of major change Americans voted for in November. In effect, while tacking toward the Republicans, Obama more or less sold out his progressive base, figuring they'll stick with him when push comes to shove.

The country will be lucky to get some incremental moves forward, which, given the humongous problems that cry out to be fixed, in some cases is almost worse than no change at all, since, unless something changes, will mean the Senate Republicans' will have effectual veto power over the course of governance at least until the midterm election of 2010. That future, of course, could be altered if Obama and the Democrats finally were to discover their governing chops and feel comfortable with engaging in the political street-fighting being waged by the Republicans.

Obama, who has an email list of 13 million voters, has not really employed this mighty political weapon to generate a tidal wave of pressure on wavering Democrats and moderate Republicans. He could still do this, of course, but he's weeks late, and the damage has been done: The Democrats lost vital momentum (not aided by their abysmal vetting process for some Cabinet and other high nominees) and permitted themselves to be outmaneuvered and, to a significant degree, rolled by the Republicans.

It's almost as if the Democrats aren't convinced they possess a huge electoral mandate to effect major change. If so, they've forgotten some mighty relevant history.

BUSH AS TRUTH-TELLER

To a large extent, the GOP lost so big in the 2008 election because they were too overt about their true intentions. The usual art of governance is based on sleight-of-hand tricks, keeping our eyes focused on something while the real agenda is hidden away from view. But the CheneyBush Administation didn't seem to care who knew what they were really up to.

The elites who pull the strings behind the curtain must have cringed every time George Dubya opened his mouth. The poor dummy couldn't help blurting out aspects of the actual agenda. "My job is to catapult the propaganda," he said. And, telling a citizen who criticized his policies: "Why should I care what you think?" And his thrice-stated "joking" remark: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator."

In terms of foreign policy, the U.S. long has been an imperialist power in the Realpolitik world. But it wasn't generally talked about openly in polite company. America placed its iron fist inside a velvet glove. Stealth imperialism, as it were. Virtually all modern presidents played that one well.

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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

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