Those Titillating Republicans

In all the hooha between Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh, the GOP is overlooking the fact that, by long tradition, John McCain is the titular head of their party.

That precept struck me in 1964 during a long conversation with former President Eisenhower. Discussing various issues, he clearly could not bring himself to mention Richard Nixon by name but kept calling him "the titular head of the party" as their 1960 candidate, even though Ike himself was the most recent Republican to occupy the White House.

This year, Republicans are no more enamored of McCain than Ike was of Nixon back then. Their 2008 candidate was non grata at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, where they also pummeled their 21st century Ike, George W. Bush.

The only prominent national politician who seems to recognize McCain's standing is his former opponent, Barack Obama, who had the Arizonan at his side today as he ordered his administration to conduct a review of how contracts are awarded throughout the government.

At a White House meeting last week, McCain had needled the President about the extravagant cost of new helicopters for the Commander-in-Chief and this week is pressuring him to do something about earmarks in the budget.

While most Republicans are howling in the wilderness with Limbaugh and Steele, John McCain is acting every inch as the titular head of the party, the loyal opposition on substantive issues.

Throwing Money at the Economy

With the worst financial hangover in recent history, Americans start a new year, still trying to figure out what hit them and being urged to swallow hair-of-the-dog pick-me-up remedies to steady their nerves.

In the aftermath of a buying binge in real estate and on Wall Street, the ironic answers to getting straight are more personal spending and much, much more government spending. In his weekly address, the President-Elect today proposes “an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that not only creates jobs in the short-term but spurs economic growth and competitiveness in the long-term.”

But this new spending spree, unlike those that caused the meltdown, according to Barack Obama, "must be designed in a new way—-we can’t just fall into the old Washington habit of throwing money at the problem.

"We must make strategic investments that will serve as a down payment on our long-term economic future. We must demand vigorous oversight and strict accountability for achieving results. And we must restore fiscal responsibility and make the tough choices so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down. That is how we will...create three million new jobs, more than eighty percent of them in the private sector.”

As always, well said, but when Congress starts working next week on up to $1 trillion of stimulus, old Washington habits won't suddenly disappear.

Republican minorities are reduced to playing tough cops on what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calls the "largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history" and the House's John Boehner is warning against "pork-barrel spending that does nothing but give taxpayer money to special interests and campaign contributors."

It's good to see the party that racked up the largest deficits in history returning to its fiscally conservative roots. We're moving into new territory here and, for all our sakes, Washington leaders have to stop scoring political points and start figuring out how to do more than just throw money at the economy.

One more brainless spending binge could send the country into an economic AA.

GOP Goes South But Obama Doesn't

His diverse Cabinet is a demographic cross-section of American talent--by gender, ethnicity, party and professional background--with one geographic exception: the South.

Given the obvious intelligence of the Obama transition, that can't be an unwitting omission. If Republicans had any questions about the meaning of last month's debacle, they can be sure now that they have been exiled into a redoubt south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Their disarray is underscored by the moronic move of Tennessee's Chip Saltsman in sending out Christmas CDs featuring what is now a racist golden oldie, "Barack the Magic Negro." The would-be chairman of the Republican National Committee, a Huckabee backer, was rebuked today by the current head saying he was "shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate."

But the GOP's problems go deeper than good taste, as David Broder points out:

"The Southern domination of the congressional Republican Party has become more complete with each and every election. This year, Republicans suffered a net loss of two Senate and three House seats in the South, but they lost five Senate seats and 18 House seats in other sections. No Republican House members are left in New England, and they have become ever scarcer in New York and Pennsylvania and across the Midwest."

Obama's idea of bipartisanship involves reaching out to moderate Republicans, such as Ray LaHood of Illinois, his new transportation secretary, who controlled the GOP before Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Mitch McConnell et al started them whistling Dixie.

As they turn their eyes northward all the way to Alaska for salvation in 2012, between now and then, Republicans will have to face the fact that they are a Southern-fried party.

The Offshore Snake Oil Bonanza

Republicans are tapping into a gusher of voter gullibility. According to the Rasmussen Reports, almost two-thirds of Americans approve of offshore drilling and believe that finding new sources of oil is more important than reducing the amount of energy they now use.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is waving the white flag by telling Larry King she might vote for drilling as part of a larger energy package, even as she proclaims, "I will not subscribe to a hoax on the American people that if you drill offshore, you're going to bring down the price at the pump. Even the president says that's not true."

The case for an easy fix is so compelling that the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund is taking out full-page newspaper ads to decry offshore drilling as "George W. Bush's Gasoline Price Elixir" that is "100% Snake Oil" and urge letters to Congress saying, "I am not buying the lie...that sacrificing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and America's coastal waters to oil drilling would make a real difference in gas prices--either today or twenty years from today!"

The Washington Post editorial page, ever faithful to the Bush Administration, starts out to debunk the ad but ends up agreeing that "the United States cannot drill its way to energy independence."

Offshore oil won't bring down prices at the pump (the current drop is showing that only lower demand can do that) but, as long as there are November votes buried in the issue, McCain and Congressional Republicans will keep hammering away.

Republicans Wrestle With Pork

A generation gap is dividing GOP members of Congress over the classic conflict between doing good for the country and doing well for the voters who sent them there.

According to Washington insiders' bible, The Hill, "earmarking funds back home is becoming the most divisive issue facing congressional Republicans.

"The fight largely pits junior conservatives--arguing that the failure of Republicans to aggressively fight earmarking is preventing the GOP from reclaiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility--against party veterans, who say that it is their prerogative to choose funding priorities..."

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Alaska's Ted (Bridge-to-Nowhere) Stevens, who is trying to remove him as chairman of the conservative Steering Committee, are the leading antagonists. The subject is likely to set off sparks at today's annual retreat of Senate Republicans.

In the House, a proposal being pushed by Young Turks Mike Pence of Indiana, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Jeb Hensarling of Texas, calls for a moratorium on earmarking for the rest of the year. They plan to push the House GOP conference to rally around their plan at their retreat tomorrow.

“This would be pure electoral gold for Republicans,” Flake says, pointing out that Democrats were not likely to stop earmarking in response.

Pence asserts the pledge would show Americans that House GOP members were willing to “set aside the priorities of our districts for a year” to get spending under control and would pressure Democrats to follow suit.

Proof that voters care about the issue can be seen on a web site that tracks earmarks.

Post-Bush, Republicans may be in disarray, but at their retreats this week, there will be a good deal of talk about charging back toward power.

High Noon for S-CHIP

In the President’s favorite movie, the righteous hero stands alone and guns down the bad guys. Bush has played Gary Cooper in the showdowns over Iraq, and now he is facing down the villains in the S-CHIP fight.

But Bush has modeled himself on the wrong 1950s western. True to Washington and Hollywood, “High Noon” is more about pride and calculation than humanity. Those who care about people rather than power have always preferred “Shane.”

At the end of “High Noon,” the hero, after gunning down the bad guys, converting his Quaker wife to killing and showing his contempt for everyone else, rides off with Grace Kelly to some Olympus denied other mortals, all as a reward for his concept of manhood.

In “Shane,” a retired gunfighter reluctantly takes up arms again to protect a family he loves and their hard-working community against ruthless power. His reward is to ride off to die, alone.

That’s a concept that the man who the former President of Mexico calls a “windshield cowboy” fails to understand. (In his memoirs, Vincente Fox recounts Bush’s skittishness about getting on a horse, preferring to drive a pickup truck instead.)

This time Bush is playing cowboy with the health and lives of millions of children. Senate Democrats are trying to round up enough Republicans to override his veto in tomorrow’s vote, but the First Moviegoer is sticking to his guns.

It may be too late to stop Bush’s acting out of old oaters, but those who have to belly up to the ballot box next year should think hard about the consequences of the shootout.

Republicans' Pity Party

The Bush Administration keeps recalling the cliché about the kid who kills his parents and pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

Now Republicans are retiring in droves and bewailing the vicissitudes that have made their legislative lives unbearable.

Today’s Washington Post reports “moderate Republicans in Congress are facing a tough choice: Stand by President Bush or run for their political lives. Votes are due soon on Iraq, an expansion of a children's health insurance program and an array of spending bills. GOP leaders hope to use them to regain credibility with their base voters as a party for strong defense and fiscal discipline. But moderates, many of them facing the possibility of difficult reelection bids next year, are dreading the expected showdowns.”

It would be easier to sympathize with those Republican moderates if they hadn’t handed over the keys to their home to Newt Gingrich in 1994 and stood by while George W. Bush has been burning it down for the past six years.

Emblematic of their experience is the recent decision of Lincoln Chafee, a second-generation product of what used to be respectable Republicanism, to leave the party that sent him to the Senate but then turned its back on him over his positions on abortion and gay rights.

The Democrats who stand to gain by the Republican debacle might want to keep in mind that, despite the horror show of the Bush years, there is no ultimate profit for a party that abandons its core principles.

The Era of Lost Leverage

Now that the Petraeus Show has left town, Washington is in limbo and likely to stay there for some time.

Democrats don’t have the votes to, forgive the expression, move on to mandate troop withdrawal as Congressional Republicans cower under the thin cover of “Return on Success,” depriving anti-war legislators of any leverage to breach the barriers of Bush vetoes.

In Iraq, Bush has no leverage to move Maliki et al toward the national reconciliation that would justify a claim of victory. Just as the Democrats were boxed in by the argument that, if you announce troop withdrawal, the enemy can wait you out so is Bush boxed in by the reality that, in announcing the troops are staying, he has removed any urgency on the part of sectarian factions to settle their differences. They can wait us out and keep hoping to wear us down.

Call it stability, stalemate or quagmire but we need leadership to open new diplomatic possibilities in the Middle East before Cheney persuades his puppet to get us unstuck by attacking Iran.

If they won’t make a move to end the fiasco in Iraq, Congressional Republicans and Condoleeza Rice can save what’s left of their reputations by getting to work to stop that.

September Song for Iraq

All year long, politicians of both parties have been tuning up for September. Now, as the lyrics say, the days are dwindling down to a precious few for Congressional Republicans who have to face the music next fall, but George Bush is still playing the waiting game in Iraq.

He now plans to ask for another $50 billion to keep funding the war in the belief that the mixed signals of progress that Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are bringing to legislators will be enough to cow Congress into going along.

But the White House may be misreading the sheet music. John Warner’s little solo last week following Dick Lugar’s aria should reinforce earlier humming by Mitch McConnell and John Boehner that the chorus of yea-sayers is thinning out. Even the "sliming" of Congressional visitors to the war zone this month seems to be backfiring.

Add to all that unprecedented cacophony among the military, who are sounding notes of discord about what to do next.

Starting next week, there will be loud disharmony in the Washington air.