Getting Off On The Wrong Foot

I am concerned. It looks like the Republicans are going to win the House, which is a good thing. But winning power is only half the battle. The other half is what you do with it, once you get it. For months now, I’ve been saying that the Republicans were starting to get it. But I am concerned that they are about to blow it.

For some time now, I’ve been pointing out that the Democrats are staring at an historic loss in November. Although the MSM is openly talking about the Democrats losing 30-40 seats, and more knowledgeable people are suggesting closer to 70, the evidence is there for something in excess of 100 seats. Even now, more evidence is pouring in, such as the quiet announcement this weekend by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that they are about to cut off a large number of “under-performing candidates,” i.e. guys who look like they’re going to lose.

At the same time, I’ve been pointing out instances where the Republicans are getting it. They stood unified against almost everything Obama tried. Representatives like Paul Ryan have been doing some heavy thinking of conservative ideas. Senators like Jim DeMint have been doing some heavy funding of conservative candidates (much to the establishment’s chagrin). Bright, shiny new candidates like Christie in New Jersey and McConnell in Virginia have been showing how conservative ideas can be put in place despite the objections of the entrenched entitlement brigade. And even the MSM is starting to talk about moderate conservatives like Mitch Daniels as “attractive alternatives" to Obama -- so sayeth The Economist twice now.

So what’s the problem?

Well, as I’ve said before, the Republicans need a platform, and not some weirdo 1,000 page platform that caters to every fringe interest group in the party or that promises “conservatism” as defined by K Street along with neoconservative international nation building. What they need to promise is ultra simple: cancel Obama’s brand of soft-socialism, cronyism, and rule by unaccountable czars. Replace it with genuine free market reforms, genuine stimulus, a massive trimming of the federal government and its privileges and perks, deep spending cuts to control the deficit, entitlement reform, and repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

And if you want the top three to put into a sales pitch, (1) slash payroll taxes to encourage hiring and to make work more valuable for American workers, (2) repeal and replace ObamaCare with a system that lifts burdensome regulations, wipes out state-insurance monopolies, frees doctors to manage their own businesses, improves medical oversight, and gives patients incentives to cut their own costs, and (3) slash federal spending by cutting salaries, ending bailouts, canceling the porkulus, and cutting spending across the board to 2007 levels.

That’s what they should be promising. But here’s what is coming out of the mouths of several prominent Republicans. . .

“Woo boy, we is gonna hold hearings!”

Hearings into where the stimulus money went (i.e. which Obama cronies got the money). Hearings into the handling of GM. Hearings into Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Hearings into Jobgate (i.e. the offers to Sestak and Romanoff). Hearings into a dozen other matters the public doesn't remember. Said one staffer, they are salivating at the “opportunity of making ‘the most transparent administration in history’ respond to subpoenas.”

There is one word that comes to mind when I hear this and it rhymes with truck. Have these ignorant fools learned nothing? The public wants the nation’s problems solved. They want a government that sits quietly in the background minding its own darn business until it is needed to solve a national crisis. They do not want political show trials and chest-pounding hearings where Congressmen get all bent out of shape over issues we already know all about and about which we made up our minds a long time ago. Wow, the unions benefited from the bails outs? You don't say?! You mean Obama may have made an illegal job offer to Joe Sestak? You're kidding! Tell me more.

I know many of you don’t like Obama and would like to see him dragged through the mud and every one of his warts exposed for the public, just as the Democrats did to Bush and Reagan. But let me assure you, this will not hurt him, it will hurt our side. It always does.

Did Bill Clinton lie under oath? Certainly. Does anyone care? The public certainly doesn’t, his popularity soared after those hearings. Indeed, all the Republicans achieved was making him into the victim and making themselves come across as a party composed of petty morality police and hypocrites. Did Reagan break the law during Iran-Contra? Sure. Did anyone care? No. The public liked the fact Reagan was fighting the bad guys. His popularity soared. All those hearings did was make Oliver North into a hero and make the Democrats look like vindictive anti-American scum.

Our history is littered with attempts by one party to use the Congress to expose the President of the other party as the boogeyman. It’s never reflected well on the party that started the witch hunt. The public just doesn’t care. They want results, not grandstanding.

And right now is certainly not the time to try this garbage again. When you see Tea Party people show up at rallies, they aren’t demanding hearings. You don’t see signs that say “Send out the Subpoenas!” There are no rallies demanding that the Republicans expose Obama -- Obama exposed himself! We know what he is and we want him stopped. We want the wasteful spending he’s lavishing on his friends stopped. We want spending cut, power curtailed, and freedom restored. We don’t want show trials and mock outrage as grandstanding Congressmen pretend to discover what we all already know.

Obama came into office with the power to make the Democrats into a permanent majority party, and he blew it with his crony neo-socialism. The Republicans now have the chance to seize the initiative and cement themselves as the new permanent majority party. But if they go down the road of political theater, of investigations and weak referrals to special prosecutors, rather than boldly standing up and declaring a new day in America. . . a day of free market capitalism and an end to abusive government power, then they can hang it up right now.

Fight the battle for the future, don't try to score points with wonks about the past.