Eric Cantor just kan't shake his party's dogmatic slumber. He had his chance in a major speech to the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, but he came across as just another Republican pol rolling out just another newer Republican Party, which nonetheless insists on imitating that other Republican Party.
The party's "ideas" are doing fine, say its contemporary pols, only they can't seem to find the right platitudes. That, anyway, is the prevailing internal diagnosis. If only their marketing horse-and-buggy team can drop the right horseshit, the increasingly wary electorate will lap it up. So one after another, one GOP pol after GOP pol, the Cantors and Priebuses and Jindals give it their all.
And what do we get? A call for "opportunity [as] a reality for ... everyone," combined with this walloping contradiction: "And to restrain Washington from interfering in those pursuits" of opportunity.
Or, to put it more straightforwardly, to restrain Washington from helping those who lack the many opportunities of the already affluent--a philosophical Republican dogma of at least three decades running, which would have brought howls of conservative protest from Lincoln, T.R., and Eisenhower, all of whom saw government as an essentially positive force in American society.
As do most Americans, who are the GOP's real problem. The party has disfigured "conservatism" into an ugly, angry, fanatical brand of everything but a forward prudence; and in doing so it has lost, or is losing, the fundamentally conservative American electorate.
Well, if it's done properly (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl7ca_QL5kY) it is possible to polish poo. But Cantor and the rest of the GOPer whackadoodles lack the required skill set.
Posted by: shsavage | February 06, 2013 at 09:07 AM
GFor the last 30-40 years , the GOP has been able to do a fantastic job of polishing it poo. The messaging machine of the Right has been fine tuned to the point they could call white black and people would believe it.
I don't think that is working as well any more. People (at least a majority) have rejected the GOP definition of "job creators" and the theory that "tax cuts cure all ill" and most of the other platitudes the GOP has vomited upon the country.
Although there will always be a subset (27%) that will willingly absorb and accept what the Right says and another 15-20% that will vote reflexively for the GOP, on a national basis that may be as high as they can get now.
2014 will be a critical election year, particularly at the state level. If Dems can retake a lot of state legislatures they can remap the Congressional districts that the GOP gerrymandered so heavily after the 2010 elections.
Then come 2016, the GOP can be fully relegated to permanent minority status.
Posted by: japa21 | February 06, 2013 at 09:35 AM
Japa, are you suggesting that Dems follow the GOP in redistricting as soon as they control a statehouse?
Radical!
Posted by: Jim Milstein | February 06, 2013 at 01:03 PM
Jim, yes I am. And of course the GOP would have a fit. Actually, I think the way redistricting is done now, no matter which party is involved, is a dsigrace. There has to be a better way, whether an indpendent committee or some computer system, something.
Posted by: japa21 | February 06, 2013 at 01:33 PM
California has sorted out the redistricting situation for now. Independent Committee withstood three court challenges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission
Posted by: W Caulfield | February 06, 2013 at 04:33 PM