Democrats Should Carterize Republicans

Is Professor Wagstaff running the GOP?

As he often does, Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles got it right. A recent offering (see illustration) shows an elephant—the Republican Party symbol—preparing a response to President Obama’s upcoming Supreme Court nominee. The president hasn’t actually made a choice yet, but Toles is no doubt prescient that its response will be “No!”

Think he’s exaggerating? The day the cartoon hit the paper Republicans announced their intent to oppose the president’s forthcoming bank reform bill. Mitch (don’t call me “Der Fuhrer”) McConnell is attacking it as a “bailout” bill that will cost taxpayers money even though, in truth, there’s not a dime in spending in the proposal. It deals entirely with oversight of abuses, regulating reckless investment patterns, creating a consumer protection agency to—among other things—curb usurious credit card charges, and liquidating failed banks. Shall I mention that most Republicans, including McConnell, actually voted for the real bailout plan last year? The truth is that the GOP opposes the bill because the dreaded “R” word—regulation—is involved, one that would put a crimp in the freewheelin’ style of their corrupt banker buddies.

The GOP has become a withering, trumpeting pachyderm stuck on one note: No! They remind me of Quincy Wagstaff, a character played by Groucho Marx in the 1932 film Horsefeathers. To his trustees Professor Wagstaff, the recently appointed president of Huxley College, explains his governing philosophy by singing, “Whatever it is, I’m against it/No matter what is or who commenced it/I’m against it.” What’s going on here? I’m used to the Democrats self-destructing, but in recent years the GOP has taken over the whiners’ pulpit. They’re actually making inept Democrats look competent by comparison.

Here’s what the Democrats should do in the fall elections: Carterize the Republicans. No, that’s not a typo; I did not mean cauterize. The reference is to Jimmy Carter who, in 1978, delivered a speech now dubbed the “malaise” speech. It was, in many ways, prescient. It warned Americans that the energy crisis was real and permanent. It told them they needed to conserve, live within their means, and look to the future instead of the past. Americans hated the speech—it was a real downer, the facts be damned. In 1980 voters elected sunny Ronald Reagan, who told them what they wanted to hear. Democrats need now to paint the Republicans as Carteresque naysayers who don’t believe in America’s potential. It shouldn’t be hard to do—hell, the GOP is handing it to them gift-wrapped.

Pundits have made a big deal out of a so-called “conservative resurgence” since Reagan, but the truth of it is that Republicans have only ruled by scaring the bejesus out the public. Reagan scored because of the ruined economy in the wake of OPEC boycotts and because of the Iranian hostage crisis. His successor, George H. Bush, managed a dirty campaign in which fear of crime (Willie Horton, anyone?) and flag-burning obscured his lack of ideas. Newt Gingrich touted his oh-so-brief “Contract with America” at a time in which Clinton scandals (Whitewater and sexual) weakened the Democrats, and George W. Bush flat-out stole the 2000 election and would have been a single-termer had it not been for 9/11, which he milked until people finally noticed that the emperor had no clothes. If fear has run its course, the Republicans are in big trouble.

What’s becoming patently obvious is that the Republicans don’t have any ideas. Tax cuts? Booooooring! We all know that little dodge is simply a smokescreen for looting the treasury. Culture wars? Hate to break the news, but most Americans don’t want the Christian Right in charge. (Sarah Palin’s current favorability rating is just 25%.) The war on terror? Both parties agree on that one and it hasn’t gone well under either. So what’s left? Well, there’s always attacking Big Government, a ploy that sounds really good until we downsize by cancelling stimulus projects, curtailing student loans, slashing highway projects, and making grandma pay more for her Medicare. Republicans can’t even manage fear properly these days. Did anyone catch the act of Pastor Wiley Drake, the Orange County, California whack job who wants Republicans to pray for the death of all 219 Democrats voting for health care reform? (He also belittled serious car accident injuries suffered by Senator Reid’s wife and daughter. He should be glad Harry Truman is dead; Truman would have punched the little fascist in the mouth!) News Flash: Health care passed. In related news, scientists confirm that the sky has not fallen.

All we know is that the GOP is opposed to everything—it’s the party of NO! Nastiness and naysaying isn’t leadership—it’s irresponsible demagoguery. If Democrats have an iota of common sense, they will ride the GOP’s own tidal wave of negativism to victory. The fly in the ointment? It would require that Dems actually have common sense.