Missing the Mark on the GOP’s Target
These days, it’s getting harder to tell the clueless from those with the best-laid plans. Congressional Democrats. Mainsteam Media. Republicans trying to take down both of them. Early Wednesday, Politico’s Glenn Thrush suggested Nancy Pelosi may no longer be the target of Republican criticism–in large part because of her eight grandchildren. Apparently, no one wants to see grandma get roughed up.
But it seems ludicrous for Republicans to be so vocal in backing down from their criticism of an opponent because she’s a woman with eight grandchildren. Give it a couple days and I’m sure a good Democratic strategist will latch on to the underlying sexism of Republicans backing off of Pelosi and yet another field day in Democratic public relations will have begun.
Of course, the ultimate irony of this strategy is Speaker Pelosi being protected from criticism by eight children, despite her callous misrepresentation of her own Church’s religious tenets in order to facilitate her consistent advocacy for policies capable of killing thousands of viable kids.
And if you can’t criticize her politics, what about her stupidity? While Republicans take the brunt of the elementary-school “you’re a stupid head” arguments, the Democrats–from Pelosi, to Harry “The War is Lost” Reid, to Joe “The Mess” Biden–transition between idiotic statements like a DJ switching beats at a techno club. Who can forget this gem?
In any case, during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Tom Delay offered this on the “Lay-Off Grandma” strategy, stating, “This whole notion that we’re not going to take on Obama but take on Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid will get you nowhere.” Thrush interprets Delay’s comment to mean that Republicans must train their political spears on President Obama, alone.
According to Thrush:
As Democrats settle in on Rush Limbaugh as their Man in Black, GOP leaders are concluding that the speaker of the House doesn’t quite rise to the same political devil level.
Their solution: Goodbye, Nancy, Hello, Barack.
In reading Thrush’s article, it is difficult to glean whether Delay and other Republicans are about to drop the ball again or if Thrush is merely misinterpreting their strategy. Regardless, however, if Republicans drop attempts to criticize of, or avoid levying alternatives to, Pelosi’s policies, then they will be making yet another mistake. The demonization and destruction of individual citizens is something Democrats are uniquely qualified to accomplish.
Deciding that President Obama is the Republicans’ singular face of “evil” is counter-productive and cheapens the debate that lies ahead. Besides, why criticize and critique the ass-backwards policies of one Democrat when there are so many other Democrats whose policies are just as ass-backwards?
The bottom line is that we’re not dealing with a reality show.
Republicans cannot simply hand a rose to one, two or even ten of the 313 elected Democrats spread around D.C. and expect to focus our criticism against those individuals alone for the next two years. This is a war of philosophies, beliefs and ideas. The battle may involve hundreds, making it difficult from a logistical standpoint, but the fight must be taken to each and every one of those Democrats if Republicans have any hope for future success.
America did, and continues to, want change…but not in the form of non-partisan, post-partisan, or (my personal favorite) pre-textual bi-partisan rhetoric.
America, in reality, wants politicians capable of seeing past the superficial and getting to the root of what it means to be an American on a day-to-day basis–even if that means disagreement from one person to the next. Americans embraced the change offered by President Obama, but a legitimate disconnect lies between the message he’s offering (a revolutionary change to our Government and our way of life) and the actual underlying message Americans wanted to see (a reversionary change to honesty, integrity, and the basic fundamental values of a constitutional representative, capitalist democracy).
If Democrats want to support President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid on this former view of change, Republicans should fight on behalf of the latter view with each and every Democrat they can find. That’s a fight Republicans can, and will, win with the American people.
