| The last several months have been very tough for Republicans. After the McCain/Palin ticket lost the election to Obama and Biden, there has been much finger pointing as the Republican Party moved through its post-mortem on the 2008 campaign and begins the process of strategizing for the 2010 interim elections. The divisiveness first started when Vice Presidential candidate Sara Palin separated herself from her mentor and supporter, John McCain. Palin, the gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats, complained that she had been kept on too short a leash by McCain’s operatives. Defiant, McCain’s handlers fired back that they had a hard time managing the “hillbillies” from Wasilla. The Obama/Biden ticket won, in part because a preponderance of Americans finally got to the point where they no longer accepted the doom and gloom — if you aren’t for me then you don’t love America — nor the scare-the- dickens-out-them strategy. The Republican strategy has been to focus on what’s wrong. It is the ‘why we can’t’ instead of the ‘how we can’ strategy. Its focus is on being negative and critical without any new ideas or constructive alternatives. Karl Rove, Bush’s number one advisor and overall strategist for the Republican Party, has been the chief architect of this strategy. Rove is the guy who seems to always land on his feet. He has the proverbial “nine lives” and seems to have used up more than a dozen so far. Rove is in a dog fight as he continues to avoid subpoenas from House Democratic truth commissions pushing aggressively to uncover the nefarious deeds that he did while getting special “Executive Privilege” cover from the Bush/Cheney White House. The strategy was evident on Tuesday in the Republican response to President Obama’s address to both houses of Congress. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal attached the President’s Economic Stimulus Package in his rebuttal, opining that he would refuse to take $100 million in federal funds that was slated to go to his state. He criticized that the budget was full of pork and that there were strings attached to the taking of the funds that were unacceptable. In typical hypocritical fashion, he failed to mention that he did accept the other $39.9 billion that was part of the package. The folly of the strategy was exposed when California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and several other Republican governors said that they would gladly accept the funds that Jindal refused for Louisiana. This past Sunday, Rove was asked what he thought about President Obama’s extreme high approval ratings given that he was moving quickly and decisively on so many fronts: moving aggressively to forestall the devastating effects of the economic recession; unveiling a strategy for addressing the exploding deficit; bringing an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and fixing healthcare all in one week. Rove gave the same old tired Republican responses that no longer hold water with the electorate. He accused the President of being a socialist with his efforts to promote healthcare reform. He said this President is moving in too many directions too fast. He chided that on the campaign, Obama opined negatively about the growing Federal debt. Rove accused the President of piling record debt onto existing record debt which meant that he was hypocritical and therefore worse than the Bush Administration. Kathryn Van Huevel of “The Nation” struck back rightly so by stating that it was in fact hypocrisy of the worse kind for Rove to be critical given that Rove was the man who advised Bush as he created the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression. Last week, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) held its annual conference in Washington, D.C. where speaker after speaker promulgated negativity. The bash-the-President theme reached its crescendo when the featured speaker Rush Limbaugh took to the podium on Sunday. Limbaugh came right out and said that he and all Republicans should do all that they can to make sure that Obama fails as President. He attacked the President saying his policies would lead to the “bastardization of the Constitution,” to communism, socialism and the denial of freedoms and individual liberty in the U.S. President Obama has put his focus on setting the stage for a battle with various entrenched special interest groups and their lobbyists over the challenges in getting his $3.5 trillion budget passed. He has rightfully chosen to stay above the fray and ignore the racist cartoon in the New York Post, the watermelon Easter at the Whitehouse flap by the California Mayor, the negative attacks by Rove, Limbaugh and the others. The racist caricatures have been addressed by Rev. Al Sharpton and a broad coalition of progressive groups. The attacks from the extremist right must also be deconstructed and exposed by the Democratic leadership, progressives, and those in the objective and liberal media, for what it is — negativity with no constructive alternatives. If Republicans are serious about reconstructing the Party after disastrous losses in the past two elections, then they too must isolate and separate themselves from the negativity and pursue a higher and more positive collaborative strategy. While Rush Limbaugh’s rhetoric may serve as raw meat to excite the Republican base, it will, at the same time, also be rejected by the majority of the electorate. If Limbaugh somehow emerges as the spokesperson and leader of the Republican Party, then the Democrats will surely be on their way to a three-peat in the coming 2010 elections. |
Political resurrection and the politics of no
