I think Andrew Samwick misses the point when he writes:What if the problems were deeper than merely Caribou Barbie and Ken?The Right Wing Strategy | Capital Gains and Games: I suspect it will take months or even years for those on the political and ideological Right to map out a strategy to compete in national elections after two sound defeats in 2006 and 2008. The first step has been to assign blame.... Christie Todd Whitman in yesterday's Washington Post lays the blame on "social fundamentalists." I don't know how constructive that is -- each Party has a base, and if you alienate the base, you have to make inroads substantially across the political center to make up for it. The most liberal Republican he could have picked for his running mate would have been Whitman herself. I don't think that ticket would have run any better against Obama-Biden this year...Andrew Samwick has no influence on how the next Republican presidential and congressional candidates will campaign. But he does have the potential to have considerable impact on how those Republican members of congress (and perhaps presidents) govern: to push them toward governing in a constructive conservative manner--rather than be, say, a rerun of Gingrich-Armey-DeLay-Boehner-Dole-Lott-McConnell-Bush governance, which has been "conservative" only in its social policy.
So I want to hear something very different from Andrew this winter: I want to hear what ideas and policies the Republican Party could serve as a carrier for that would make America a better country and the world a better world, and I want to hear how all of us can help make the Republican Party the carrier of those ideas--rather than the ideas of, say, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Rush Limbaugh, to name three sets that America and the world would be better off without.
[ cf In Which I Think Andrew Samwick Misses the Point... ( emphasis mine ) ]
I don't mean to be harsh here boys and NonPerkin, but maybe it is time for america to work on a series of serial issues.
Many of the snivellers listed in the Gingrich-Armey-DeLay-Boehner-Dole-Lott-M
Which is really very funnier now - since we do have the crisis of faith about what did we mean about allowing NonMalePerkin the same sorts of rights like RealMen[dm].
Yes, I do hate to remind americans about the still ongoing crisis of faith about the role of women in actual american society!!! Yes, it is not as popular as it once was to preach the gospel that women must stay silent in the church, and that there is no separation of church and state... and the concomitant problem of what that should have meant about which of the "Third Wave" should have been selected as McCain's True Running Mate...
Clearly the Evil Liberals are getting to point to having elected someone who sorta sets a mark. But will this really be the whole Klingon "Only Richard Nixon could go to Peking." Thing where 'affirmative action' can finally be killed, because as a society, "POOR" is still the new race that we can get away with being prejudice against...
And who knows, maybe it will even be acceptable to have discussions about national level policy issues without having to worry about who MUST be burned at the stake for not having true faith in Great Leader whom GOD, the one true and only one, has put upon the Throne because of the Divine Mandate of the Divine Rights of Great Leader.... You know, the sort of "divine right of kings" stuff, but with biblical thunder, because the bible does talk about kings, but not about presidents, but without the sort of mamby pamby europeanism, where they just do not love the Righteousness of Kings, because, uh, they are European, and hence not as american as we are...
Granted, this would mean ending the GOVERNMENT WELFARE PROGRAMME to the Comedy Channel, and force joke writers to actually do their own work...
But maybe that is not a bad idea...
Who knows, we might even work on getting Knowledge to be knowledgeable.... and facts factual, and laws, Legal!
And what if maybe the first thing that the Republican Party should start out with is trying to understand what REALLY HAPPENED before we start the Hunt for the BringersOfSin, who have brought this Plague Upon Us, and thus the WRATH of GOD, because the EVIL LIBERAL CANADIANISTS, like david frum, have been, so, well, unamerican!!!
WHAT AM I THINKING??? that would mean getting the RINO in the Party to accept the idea that there is an actual flow of history that is not a part of the Post-Surrealist-UnReality-Sphere! That they do not get to go back and edit what they coulda,shoulda, woulda, have done, IF ONLY they had been willing to do the thinking before the leaping off into the VOID!!!!
It could happen!!!
It might even be possible to get some folks inside of both parties to start thinking about the need for a return to sanity. To accept that the Cold War is over. That there just are not the sort of Great Lands of Orcs where we can send our riff-raff, to, well, get them out of the local area....
Ah yes.... It would be so reassuring to see the GOP party leading the way to sanity, sobriety and seriousness, but I am not expecting that miracle this week.... maybe next...