June 23, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

GOP DEAD IN THE WATER

When it comes to guiding the ship of state the GOP is dead in the water and starting to sink. Maybe it's a good thing there are no new ideas, because Republican ideas have almost all been bad. We got into the disaster and atrocity in Iraq thanks to the "intellectuals" at PNAC and their puppet president. We got the gold standard of bad ideas in trickle down economics. We've had other winners like school vouchers and "faith based initiatives." This article by Paul Waldman is at www.prospect.org:

Two years ago, in a much-discussed cover article for The New Republic called "The Case Against New Ideas," Jonathan Chait argued that Democrats should resist the pleas of pundits to look for their political salvation in new plans and visions. But as the 2008 race gathers speed, it appears to be the Republicans who have abandoned ideas -- new or otherwise -- in a quest for the GOP nomination that has been remarkable in its utter lack of substance, even by the standards of contemporary campaigns.

Think about it this way: Can you think of a single substantive proposal consisting of more than a sentence or two that any of the GOP candidates has made on the campaign trail? I'm not even talking about some lengthy policy paper or plan for overhauling a major sector of government. But any idea to do something, anything, differently than the Bush administration has? The closest one can come is the immigration bill that Congress is debating, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor. But one gets the impression that McCain wishes no one would bring it up, at least until the primaries are over and all those pesky nativists have nowhere to go but to the Republican nominee. Is there anything else the Republican candidates are actually proposing to do? Any discernable agenda coming from any of them? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It's true that in practice, "ideas," particularly "new ideas," usually serve mainly as signifiers of change from the way things are currently done. This makes things harder on Republicans, as the party currently in charge of the executive branch. A Democrat can offer a relatively simplistic three-point plan for getting out of Iraq, and it sounds like a new idea. But for a Republican who still supports the war (as they all do, with the exception of Ron Paul), coming up with a "new idea" on Iraq would require some exceptional creativity. And this is not a particularly creative crew.