Op-Ed: Republican comeback is too much, too soon, and a very bad move

The mad scramble to discredit Obama and the heath care plan has certainly put the Republicans back on the radar, but that apparently successful strategy could well backfire on them soon if they don’t put their house in order and silence the radicals.

A presidential term lasts four years, yet here we are after just six months of Obama-style presidency and certain currents of the Conservative movement are already rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate what they consider to be Obama’s retreat and the crippling of his presidency. Those people should change their glasses or maybe go buy some if they don’t have any because they are just what the Republican party does not need. The recent inflammatory events, remarks and press statements by both protesting Republicans and their somewhat vaguely-defined party leadership are also what is being joyfully used to sell paper by an ethically bankrupt and moribund press that would sell its own mother to make a buck. That press is the subject of a recent article on Digital Journal by Carol Forsloff. After over a month of this circus, it is becoming clear that all that media frenzy is giving the more radical elements the misguided view that they are on the right track, but they could not be more wrong. Bill McInturff was the lead pollster for John McCain’s presidential campaign, and he is one of many Conservative sympathisers and other observers who are beginning to see the danger and sound the alarm. He very saliently pointed out recently in the Christian Science Monitor that “You give Americans a choice between a proven failure and the unknown future, and they will pick the unknown future, whatever their doubts or concerns. They will say I don’t know for sure but I know that didn’t work and I will try something new.” His point was that this could turn out to be the Republicans’ fate. He thinks that the Republicans should not be so quick and eager to make a complete comeback until they are ready for it, because they have all the time they need. He argues that the Republicans would do better to concentrate on winning back the centrist voters they lost and that they give Obama all the rope he needs to hang himself with. Like many, he feels that the Republicans’ image is being tainted by recent events and the hotheads, and that “I would be pretty temperate over the first three to five months to make sure that mood is not being interrupted by the appearance of what we are doing.” The Republican party should follow that advice. The health care debate has incontestably given the Republican party the chance to begin its comeback, and if things keep on this track they may even weaken the president and win the mid-term elections. That is a trap they should not fall into. That victory, if it happens, will have been won by a radicalisation of the Republican party and could give them yet another excuse to put off the much-needed debate on the party’s internal reform. In other words, they will have won not because they have any real policies – and that was one of the reasons McCain lost – but because they will have succeeded in demonising Obama. That is a dangerous game, and would blow up in their faces shortly afterward when the time came to start seriously organising the next presidential elections with a much more coherent party than they have right now. Obama may have low ratings right now, 49% seems to be a fair synthesis of poll results, but Republicans are hardly able to crow about it because the public does not see them as a replacement due to the current undisciplined and ugly mess in their ranks. Many polls don’t even give them 30% in terms of being a party capable of running America. Sarah Palin is partly responsible for this situation, but she is not alone. She incarnates the frontal attack policy on Obama. With no alternative proposals, she has opted for full-frontal opposition and is Queen of the Hotheads. If I was a Democrat I’d be thinking “Keep going girl, you’re dividing and sinking your party without our help.” Palin revels in the dirt of what the Republican party is now sadly becoming. A sensationalist and media-hungry ideological throwback, with a philosophy based on the creation of fear, the demonisation of others, the use of third-rate actress anger, and a return to values many thought had disappeared. Some in the GOP have seen the danger coming of course, notably Arlen Specter, who at must be given credit for standing up for a principled party and not putting up with the headline-grabbing rabble within it. Carlos Gutierrez has come out against the “death tribunal” tactic, saying that the problem is the cost of health care, not specifics in the bill, which could be decided using responsible bi-partisan debate. Richard Allen, an ex-Reagan advisor, thinks the party has been kidnapped by uncultured hotheads” and has warned against what he calls the “systematic destruction of an American president.” He warns grimly that the total failure of Obama’s mandate so early in, under this kind of pressure, would also mean the destruction of America, and thus of Republicans themselves. Gutierrez and Allen are absolutely right. All this reminds me of Palin’s Alter-Ego, the atrociously badly educated, ill-willed and ill-graced French female presidential candidate Ségolène Royal. Palin seems to have been inspired by her (or is it the other way around?) and, like Royal, she has not learned the lesson of her awful drubbing last time, and has already implicitly announced her intentions of running next time. Both prone a demagogical approach to politics and the hijacking of their respective parties’ philosophy. They are not interested in reforming their parties, but only whipping up the hate of the rabble-rousing elements of their support base. Ségolène Royal was thrashed in the French presidential elections, because the French are not stupid enough to fall for the cheap shot trap of voting against someone by voting for a candidate and a party with no ideas, no ideals, no stable structure, no defined leaders, and no idea of what political morality is. I do not consider Americans to be stupid. And that's why I believe that if the Republicans don’t start clearing out their party of the angries and hotheads that are beginning to take it over, the Republican party will suffer exactly the same fate.