Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

A Long and Lonely Walk Into Obscurity

President Obama is extremely popular at the moment.  The American people support him by a great majority.  Our situation is grim and we cannot abide more of what we have suffered of late.  The American people demanded change and they got it.  Now they are demanding action.  The President gets that.  The Republicans, by and large, don’t.

The recent Gallup poll showed something like 42% of Republicans approving of President Obama’s performance.  That’s stark-raving insane.  Not much less than half of the Republican party is happy with the President?  How can that be true if the Congressional Republicans stand arm in arm in opposition to this abomination?

Congress is nearly out of moderate Republicans.  This is a bad thing for the country (I’ll write on this topic at another time), but it’s a disaster for the Republican party and they are mostly oblivious to that fact.  The Republican caucuses are basically taking their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh.  That plays well with the aggrieved Right.  It’s what they want to hear and what they want to see.  One day the pendulum will swing back in their direction.  If they play this game long enough they will eventually get lucky and win an election.  That said, this political malpractice will do absolutely nothing to hasten their next victory.

History is leaving the modern Republican party behind.  We won’t always have an electorate this amped up and willing to veer a bit (or a lot) to the Left.  We should make our moves while we have a chance.  If they work we’ll have improved this country and assured our political future.  If they fail in spite of our current political power, well, these policies weren’t as hot as we thought.  We should make the most of our opportunities.

But the Republicans get none of this.  They are hoping not only that President Obama fails, but that the country fails so staggeringly that they can shock America into switching parties.  That is possible.  I would posit that this is what happened to the Republicans – the Iraq War.

My Obamacan friends aren’t all entirely happy with President Obama, true.  That said, they are appalled at the Republican party of late.  The Republicans aren’t learning the lessons they need to learn.  They’re getting schooled hard and fast by President Obama.  The sad and sorry truth here is that, for the Republicans in Congress, we’ve had reverse Darwinism.  All that survive are those least capable of adaptation.

Their moderates are gone.  America is tired of the Right.  There is no thin end of the Republican wedge.  All they have is a hammer, and no one wise enough to hold it.


2 comments

  1. Reaper0bot0

    For realizing that the Republicans are walking away from public opinion and doing nothing to change the public’s mind.

  2. As you say, my Republican friends are mostly appalled (and no, I don’t mean just Obamican).

    The patent tomfoolery of Steele and Jindal (“see?  we have colored people, too!”) not to mention Palin )”Look!  we have Vagina Americans!”) is a slap in the face to even the most gullible potential voter.  The “urban-suburban hip-hop” theme that Michael “I was a wannabe when I was young, too” Steele thinks will win over the youth vote is pathetic beyond words.

    And then there is what I perceive to be the attitude towards the Internet.  If I can sum it up, it would be like this: “The kids don’t like poodle skirts anymore, they like facebook.  So we need to revive our poodle skirts approach, and replace poodle skirts with facebook.”  There is no recognition that modern communications is anything other than a frisbee fad to be exploited, rather than a paradigm shift in how humans gather and share information.  They just don’t actually believe that there is any difference today than there was fifty years ago, and they couldn’t be more wrong.  

    Let me correct myself: they will be more wrong in two years, and even further wrong in four.  

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