Print This Post Print This Post

Feb

15

Frank Rich to GOP: How’s that strategy workin’ for ya?


There are so many great lines in today’s NYT op-ed by Frank Rich, “They Sure Showed Obama,” but I don’t feel right including more than a few.  Go read the entire piece for yourself. It is excellent.

Example 1:

Overdosing on this [Washington, D.C.] culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.

Example 2:

At least some media hands are chagrined [about the pre-stimulus success barrage from the right]. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that “perhaps we’ve overanalyzed it, we don’t know what we’re talking about.” But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating “victory.” Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus’s unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that “the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus ‘package’ is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties.” There hasn’t been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms.

Example 3:

This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt.

And finally, evidence of how President Obama is not locked in la-la-land by any partisan element:

But, as he said in Fort Myers last week, he will ultimately be judged by his results. If the economy isn’t turned around, he told the crowd, then “you’ll have a new president.” The stimulus bill is only a first step on that arduous path. The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama’s clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.

Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.

WTG and FTW, Mr. Rich.

Hattip to Dave Harding.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:03 am February 15th, 2009 in Barack Obama, Republicans 

Comments

3 Responses to “Frank Rich to GOP: How’s that strategy workin’ for ya?”

  1. 1 Laura on February 15th, 2009 10:31 am

    “Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.” This line really stood out for me–so is Obama letting them switch the tables on themselves?

    All of the politicians and bankers and pundits who got it all wrong really should be forced out of their jobs. How is it that some people have to prove their worth in value and others just prove themselves with quantities of words.

  2. 2 Jason on February 16th, 2009 10:44 am

    The democrats did nothing but obstruct and filibuster for years and hey, it worked for them.

  3. 3 PunditMom on February 17th, 2009 6:42 am

    I want to be Frank Rich in my next life!

Leave a Reply




"));