Paul Ryan asks for "a chance"

Speaking to the National Review Institute yesterday, Paul Ryan made a fitting pitch for the stupid party's 2016 presidential nomination:

[W]e can’t get rattled. We won’t play the villain in [Obama's] morality plays. We have to stay united. We have to show that--if given the chance--we can govern. We have better ideas.

If given the chance.

Just when should the clock start on their purportedly denied chance? Did it not in fact start during the 1980s, as ideological profligates jettisoned Eisenhowerian fiscal conservatism? Did it not start in the 1990s, as Republican ideologues battled the economic doom they assured us would come from Clinton's books-balancing prudence? Or when they attempted, out of political pique, to unseat a legitimately seated president? Or when, early in the next century, the same ideologues gutted the public treasury through more inequality-expanding tax cuts? Or when they launched a little-considered, wholly unprovoked war? Or when they embraced war criminality in the name of official U.S. policy?

And the clock hadn't started, or was no longer running, when Republicans chose to obstruct every post-crash recovery effort and oppose greater healthcare accessibility and threaten national default and squander four years of responsible co-governance by shrieking instead about Kenyan-telegraphed non-Hawaiian birth notices and absently sired neo-Marxist anti-colonialism and star-chamber-like death panels and the alarming dismay of teleprompters and even the soul-exposing disgrace of eating arugula for Christ's sake? 

However ...

If given the chance--we can govern.

This isn't a political party. It's a parody.

Comments

[sueme]

P.M., you are on a roll! Your last two posts have been classics.

[Robert Lipscomb]

This is a little off topic, but it gets to the issue of governing during the next 2-4 years. The left's focus on legislation is a misdiagnosis of the current situation and Obama's strategy because it is not legislative centric.

The bulk of the remaining culture war issues is in the hands of executive action and and judicial rulings or both. Immigration and gun control are notable exceptions. The size and scope of those pending bills are essentially a done deal.

There will be no cap-and-trade legislation, but Obama has accomplished most of those goals through other means: tax incentives, government purchase of green technology and doubling of gas mileage standards. The fate of thse was sealed with Obama's reelection.

Similarly, healthcare and Wall Street are in the regulatory phase. Obama simply needs to avoid rollback or gutting via the budgeting process. Again, his veto is the trump card.

Obama, Hagel and Kerry need precious little legislation to revamp the military and foreign policy strategy. This will tee up ready-made budget cuts for any future debt negotiations. And by the way, the budget is already nearly "balanced" to a level that will maintain the budget at a constant current level as a percentage of GNP.

I just don't see any new legislative initiatives on Obama's horizon that are not already done deals.

And no, the left will not like the gun control legislation, but Obama does not have the votes. As he has already shown, there are numerous executive actions he can take. He just needs funding for a few more things that are already on the books.

It is the GOP that will be frustrated in its desired legislative initiatives.

[Peter G]

Ill considered war? Sure from the point of view of geo-politics. Or morality. Or humanity. But if your goal is to finance and justify the next round of weapons development and consume vast stocks of soon to be stale dated munitions thereby making tons of money for an industry concerned by a lack of plausible enemies there is no such thing as an ill considered war.

[Turgidson]

A fine rant, sir.

I mean really, it's difficult to think of a single thing the GOP has been right about since 1994, and only a small handful since 1980, if we're being generous.

The fact that they're still as viable a party as they are is genuinely baffling and scary. When their policies aren't unfathomably cruel (hello Paul "I am a walking strawman" Ryan!), their predictions of the consequences of the policies they oppose are completely, 100% wrong (Clinton tax bill, stimulus, withdrawal from Iraq, and on and on). As are their predictions about the policies they implement (Iraq, Bush tax cuts...well, everything really), as noted above).

I long ago gave up hope that there was a critical mass of wrongness and cruelty at which point that awful party would simply die or be forced to join the real world. Thankfully, demographics are slowly, but inexorably, forcing this fate upon them. I just wish it would hurry up a bit.