A GOP shortcoming distilled to its essence

I usually don't agree with Mr. Gingrich, but he was quoted in a NYT article saying:


“I think the country is so tired right now of a style of Republican attack politics that has become a caricature of itself, they instinctively go, ‘I’m tired of that,’ ” said Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of the House. “It’s ineffective against Barack Obama right now. The country is faced with serious problems and is about to have a brand new president. You’d have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed.”

Indeed the Republican style attack politics of late have become a caricature of itself. No longer is the party fighting for any principles, and less and less even for an ideology, but simply fighting 'The Democrats'. After regaining power in the 90's riding anti-PC, anti-sexuality sentiment, they used their power to 1) flog Bill Clinton , 2) save Terry Schiavo, 3) enrich their friends, and 4)do what they could to build and keep their so called permanent Republican majority.

One thing they did well was articulating basic and popular, albeit vague, principles: limited government, fiscal conservatism, upholding the rule of law, and fighting for traditional values. How well they adhered to these while in power leaves a lot to be desired.

One thing that has always bothered me is a false (in my view) correlation with conservative politics and fiscal conservatism. By accident of nomenclature Republicans were able to use a value almost universally shared, though not as universally practiced, and proclaim for themselves the mantle of sound fiscal policy and label political liberals as irresponsible money wasters. Then, mounting an anti-tax crusade they managed to drastically cut the tax burden on their wealthy power base while simultaneously throwing around federal money as if it grew on dandelions.

In the name of reducing government they cut domestic programs and spending, ignored infrastructure maintenance and improvement, removed significant amounts of internal federal checks, balances, and oversight, and significantly weakened the government regulatory structures over private business, while simultaneously drastically expanding the federal bureaucracy with the DHS and creating a secondary shadow federal government entity through subcontracting of basic services and national security operations that proved to be both less efficient, less effective, and less accountable than the government entities they replaced.

On a moral crusade to appease their fundamental religious wing, they pushed for criminalization of personal vices, and continued the increasingly unreasonable and expensive mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and foul language on TV. At the same time they openly and brazenly disregarded longstanding statutory and constitutional prohibitions on things like torture and detainee treatment, massive warrantless eavesdropping, and lied the country into a war of aggression.

The adherance to their core principles has been selectively applied the the opposing party while behind the scenes, and- as they grew complacent and emboldened by their apparent lock on power- increasingly out in the open they adhered to the actual and eternal core political principles of gluttony, greed and avarice, wrath, and pride. (And in one or two cases sodomy)

Happy Yuletide Greetings!