http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/hantschel/255792,141han.article

February 14, 2007

What's today's GOP good at? Well, there's campaigning

By Allison Hantschel


I'll give the modern Republican party credit for something:

They are very, very good at campaigning.

They're good in debates.

They're good at making commercials.

They're good with the press, knowing just the combo of a firm
handshake and a cutesy nickname to make needy pundits weak in the
knees.

They're good at renaming things to suit their purposes.

Their hall of fame includes Freedom Fries, the "Democrat" party and
coining the awkward descriptive "islamofascism."

Most of all, they're good at the attack, the slime, the half-truth
that American voters claim to dislike but for which they almost always
fall, aided and abetted by a lazy political press corps.

Their accomplishments include the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a
group of bitter men led by an ex-bagman for Richard Nixon determined
to smear a decorated war hero.

Their accomplishments include the charges that losing one's limbs in a
war - as did Democrats Max Cleland, of Georgia, and Tammy Duckworth
here in Illinois - doesn't mean one isn't soft on terrorism.

The problem is, when the campaign's done, there's nothing left to do
but govern.

And the modern Republican party assuredly is not good at that.

What to do when your party has failed in every aspect of its six years
of unfettered rule?

What to do when your party has mired the country in an unpopular war,
increased the deficit, presided over an economy and a health care
system gone increasingly to hell?

What to do when your party's been rejected by the voters and you're in
the minority again?

Why, go back to what you're good at, of course. Campaigning.

Case in point:

Congressional Republicans recently spent several hours of debate on
the House floor accusing Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of
wanting an expensive military plane to fly her and her "family and
friends" back and forth from Washington to her home district. Tens of
thousands of dollars this will cost the taxpayers!

Republicans complained. Waste! Fraud! Abuse! There must be hearings.

There must be investigations.

Never mind that Pelosi flatly denies the charges, saying only that she
wanted some kind of aircraft that could fly nonstop to California,
much the way Republican Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, could fly back
here when he was speaker.

Never mind that the hours Republicans spent debating this question far
exceeded the number of hours they were willing to spend debating the
war in Iraq.

And never mind that under the Republican Congress we've managed to
lose hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq fighting a war that has
made us demonstrably less safe as a nation.

Hundreds of billions.

Let's have a day of argument over a couple of thousand dollars for
Pelosi's plane ride.

It's stunning, actually, how transparent they are, the modern
Republican Party.

In its first 100 hours, the Democratic Congress raised the minimum
wage, implemented the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission (a
commission for which Democrats advocated in the first place, let's not
forget), lowered the costs of college tuition for hundreds of
Americans and now is moving forward on energy-efficiency programs.

And the Republican Party's response?

Nancy Pelosi wants too nice a plane.

As Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), recently said, sarcastically
referring to the opposition as the "Republic party," this can't be the
best they've got.

"I'm sure my colleagues on the other side are so detached from reality
that they think this is what the American people want to work on," he
said.

"The Republic Party is so bankrupt of ideas that now they want to
bring up three hours of debate between the White House and themselves
about what sort of security the Speaker should have.

"The Republic Party is in the minority not just for this reason, but
this is one of them."

This is all they know how to do well.

They can't govern.

They don't even like governing.

The guru of the conservative movement, Grover Norquist, is one who
wants to "drown government in the bathtub."

If you want to be in politics but you don't want to govern, what else
is there but campaigning?

What else is there but the contest, the fight, the TV spot and the
30-second rebuttal?

What else is there but to fall back on the only skills you've ever
really possessed?

This can't be the best they've got.

But it is.

_______________________________________________

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and
then get elected and prove it."

P. J. O'Rourke

Harry