Reading a recent column by Peggy Noonan, I had a feeling of suffocating familiarity:
For four years I have been told, by those who’ve worked in the administration and those who’ve visited it as volunteers or contractors, that the Obama White House isn’t organized. It’s just full of chatter. Meetings don’t begin on time, there’s no agenda, the list of those invited seems to expand and contract at somebody’s whim. There is a tendency to speak of how a problem will look and how its appearance should be handled, as opposed to what the problem is and should be done about it. People speak airily, without point. They scroll down, see a call that has to be returned, pop out and then in again.
It does not sound like a professional operation…
It sounds like the bureaucrats here in Ann Arbor for God’s sake!
Or in any large university. Or any city that has been taken over by THEM. They love to hold meetings. They love to hear themselves talk. They love to chatter and pontificate endlessly about Things They Consider Important. More than anything, they care deeply about How Things Look. Public Perceptions.
And if you’re someone who wants to get things done but you have to go to their endless meetings, may God help you, because they won’t. In the past, the Republicans have been the ones who Made Things Work, but hopefully that is changing.
NOT ONE REPUBLICAN — no, not even a hate “RINO” — voted for Obamacare.
I hate to belabor the point, but I think that is an important fact, all the more so because not much attention has been paid to it.
A good argument can be made that the right should focus on what it has, but which most of them are too blind to know they have. Right now, a majority of the country see what is happening, and are incredibly pissed off. They despise Obamacare, and Obama and his minions know it. The right is too shell shocked to do anything except fight each other, and argue over secondary issues like gay marriage, call each other RINOs to the point of war, etc.
What is being missed by the circular firing squad is that “RINO” Romney would win election today. What is forgotten is that NOT ONE Republican — no, not even a RINO — voted for Obamacare. That ought to matter. There is unity on the big issues, not just among Republicans, but among the majority of Americans. It’s a golden opportunity, but few seem to care.
Republicans don’t seem to know it, but the issues position them as being solidly in the catbird’s seat. They could win were they to focus on the obvious issues with which the majority agree, rather than nurse petty grudges and trying to score meaningless points.
The majority of the country can’t stand Obamacare, OK?
The Republicans are beyond reproach on that issue, OK? The Republicans are also saying no to the endless blank check, OK?
Which means that if they could manage to shut up about secondary issues, they could win.
Unfortunately, the secondary issues are the primary issues.
Comments
8 responses to ““People speak airily, without point.””
Well at least you and I are on the same page.
“Unfortunately, the secondary issues are the primary issues.”
You got it in one. And I think there are 3 of us (at the very least) on the same page.
This all sounds good, but with Speaker Boehner bashing the Tea Party at every opportunity, it seems it’s a one-way street.
The RINOs are happy to play to the socons while rejecting the Tea Party. I predict disappointment next year.
Rinos no what happens when teabaggers sow the wind! People like John McCain and his fellow semi moderates in the business community can see the future beyond 2014 for the g.o.p. with 100,000 minority kids turning 18 every month and hating republicans! Gerrymandering can only go so far and leave g.o.p. vulnerable to wave election! They do not want to go down with the teabaggers on the titanic!
All this talk about RINOs, The Tea Party and Obamacare is nothing more than whistling past the graveyard, a pretense that what the Republican Party does actually matters when we are at the end stage of democracy.
The hard left is not going to give up power so close to achieving total control. If they have to rig the election or create a crisis they will. You know these people, M.Simon & Eric. Tell me I’m wrong.
Since they’re not playing by the rules now, why should we expect them to when cornered and facing disaster?
“Which means that if they could manage to shut up about secondary issues, they could win.”
Said the Libertarian, among whom Pot is the only issue they ever lift a political finger over. I guess that’s the sort of secondary issue that they think is primary.
Everyone, including Libertarians, think their issue is THE important issue. Everyone else’s primary issue is of lesser importance. How many Libertarians got elected in 2012? Libertarians routinely sit home on election day, withholding their support from Republicans who are more in agreement with them than Democrats, thus helping to elect Democrats.
Remind me about the big GOP legislative effort on gay marriage for the last 3 years. Was that the issue that kept Boehner from opposing ObamaCare for the last 3 years? No, he sits in his office and fund-raises on the phone. He files Milking Bills to generate contributions from industry.
Now, rush off to some fringe blog site, mine the comments for anything that opposes gay marriage and imagine that is the source of all troubles in DC.
I think it was Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming that said, “If the Democrats introduced a bill to blow up the White House tomorrow, the Republicans would draft their version wherein they’d advocate for it’s dismantling over 10 years.”
Obviously, his point was that the GOP is going to the same destination as the Democrats, they just want to “make haste more slowly.”
(This does not constitute an endorsement of Simpson or his positions. But when the man makes a great point…)
This has not changed under Boehner’s speakership or minority leadership. With the exception of Obamacare and the sequester – which came out of the blue ribbon reduction panel of which Simpson was a member – the GOP establishment has acquiesced in the growth of the state both in terms of power and money.
Scott, you seem to be arguing that we should just STFU and put the GOP back in power. It would appear that your only argument is that they would do less damage or take us to hell more slowly than the democrats. You do, I trust, remember the GOP dominance in the 1st 6 years of Bush? How much roll-back of power and money – setting aside the Iraq expenditures – occurred under the GOP’s watch then? What about the impact of Medicare Part D – Bush’s signature domestic accomplishment – and how much coverage of that grab of medical power away from the American citizen did the GOP pundits provide?
Admittedly, the strategy of the TEA Party is brinksmanship and MAY have a serious downside. But we already know where the GOP slow train is headed and it is as inexorable if not as speedy as the Democrat Express. If the GOP establishment is not derailed we will arrive at the Democrats’ destination. And the only way to derail the establishment is to primary them out of their political jobs and once they are gone, purge the GOP party structure of those who would be fellow, if slower, travelers of the ‘gressive (add ‘A’ ‘Pro’ or ‘Re’ to taste) Democrats. Before they can co-opt and intimidate other Tea Partiers as they seem to have accomplished with Mike Lee of Utah.
PS.
It is disingenuous at best to dismiss the author’s continuing points about the War on Drugs which he approaches from a mainly Civil Rights perspective. His information and advocacy for the medical usefulness of cannabis has an interesting historical implication; I’m sure that if the present pressure group democracy had been in place before the old medical guard that opposed the germ theory of disease had died off, we would be seeing the provision of antiseptics and antibiotics criminalized and their efficacy derided in the establishment press today.