Back to Basics

Watching right now the McLaughlin Group: would like to read the results of Monica's push poll that shows a mere 42 percent of Americans approving of this stimulus bill, or her Fox News poll that shows that "Americans prefer tax cuts to new spending." They also disapprove of handouts for the perverted arts, I hear.

And Johnny Mac is wishing a little too hard, methinks, when he calls House passage of any Obama bill a failure. BHO reached out, people know he reached out and all GOP soundbites make them sound like petulant prep school ninnies -- I'm looking at you, Paul Ryan. So who had the better PR week? The stimulus will come back, amended in conference, and everybody can get on board, or else lose in 2010. And we will get you Mike Pence.

But the GOP "rediscovered its manhood" and "got its groove back"? Not this week. Not after a "bruising five-way fight" for the RNC chairmanship gets you a doctrinaire laissez-faire conservative who warns his enemies that they will be "toppled." Policy matters. The face you put on it matters less. Americans will look at this Hoover-retread fiscal conservatism and turn up their noses. So much for the Tim-Pawlenty-big-tent theory of a return to dominance...and back to the drawing board...
--
ds