Republican Resurgence, Democratic Diffidence

Just as I was elated at the election of Obama, the Republicans were downcast. Beaten. Done for. But because the Democrats failed to take control and vigorously push their agenda, the Republicans were able to fill the void. Obama is a formidable negotiator but a weak leader.

That's the premise of Mark Sumner's post. He doesn't mention the Tea Party phenomenon; he says: "It took no more than a few rude shouts and baseless accusations to upend the health care bill and turn it into a windfall for the very same companies that were causing the health care crisis."

The Republicans are playing a long game -- 30 years and counting. If they can crush the labour movement, it's check and mate.

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And Have Not Love

by Mark Sumner for Daily Kos:

You think it's shocking to see Republicans tearing through rights like a hot knife through butter? Believe me, you're not half as shocked as one group I know: the Republicans.

Republicans honestly never expected to be in this position. Sure, Fox News kept up the drum beat, but every Republican I know, every former candidate, every GOP campaign worker, every ex-office holder, every rank and file Republican... they had all given up. It wasn't just a few Democrats who thought the D-ticket had locked down the ballot box for the next decade or so. Well before Election Day in 2008, Republicans could hear the bell tolling. They expected to pack their bags, move to the wilderness, and reinvent themselves. Hello, 2020, we're Republicans, but not like those guys you knew before. Not at all.

And why not expect a long term on the sidelines? They understood well enough that they had screwed up. The conservative policy of using the military to solve every problem – even problems that didn't exist – had landed the nation in two protracted, exhausting, fruitless wars with neither a prospect of immediate victory nor even a good idea what victory might look like. Conservative foreign policy, founded on exceptionalism grown into overweening vanity, had weakened old relationships and pushed away even our staunchest allies. Conservative deregulation had turned the markets into a showplace for elaborate thievery, and the banks into shells stuffed with worthless paper. Conservative trickle-down economics had sent the wages of the vast majority of Americans into reverse, sent jobs by the millions winging overseas, opened a yawning gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else, and brought on the biggest economic crisis in eighty years.

Republicans had taken a prosperous, peaceful nation with a budget surplus and turned it into a nation tottering on the edge of economic catastrophe, with an overextended military and nothing but lint in the bank account. When President Obama came into the office with huge levels of support, it wasn't just that people got caught up in the spirit of the occasion. It was relief. The Republicans, whose every working principle had turned out to be not just wrong but dead wrong, were gone.

All Democrats had to do was to offer an alternative.

They're not playing to win 2012. They're playing for the end game.

To read the entire article, click here.