I have a suggestion for you sweet-flavored coffee lovers. Trek on up to Senorita Burrita at 227 Prince St. and order a latte with sugar-free hazelnut syrup. You won’t find a finer tasting sugar-free hazelnut anywhere else.
I’m not going to focus too much on President Barack Obama’s propoganda pitch speech tonight to a joint session of Congress. Instead, let’s talk about re-inventing the Republican brand.
Who hasn’t heard about reinvention from a Republican in the wake of Obama’s dominating victory over U.S. Sen. John McCain? Newly-elected chairman of the local GOP, Craig Ebersole, invoked it just a week ago during his acceptance speech. But watching the debates in Washington during Obama’s first month, has anyone heard anything different from the GOP ground soldiers than we have for the previous 8 years? The message today is about deeper tax cuts for “job producers” (i.e. the wealthiest Americans), less government spending, deregulation and so on and so forth.
Do you hear a reinvention?
I don’t think Republicans have to cast themselves as the “new Democrats” and shift the party to the center or left. I don’t think the party philosophy of small government and low taxes has to be rewritten. They can operate as the minority-opposition party, raise questions, hold the Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership accountable. And that means more than just voting in lock step against what the President proposes. Work with all sides on a bill, compromise, draw up a plan the American populace can buy into. But the last time I checked - Election Night, November 4 - a majority of Americans asked for something new after 8 years of the Bush administration.
There are ways I think Republicans can “reinvent” the party brand.
First, to recognize the mood of the country has drastically changed. A recently released New York Times-CBS News poll showed about three-fourths of Americans surveyed have confidence in Obama’s ability to handle the economy. Even if that number is off by 15 points, that means a solid majority are behind Obama’s plan. As Frank Rich of the New York Times noted this month, the inside-the-beltway Republicans may be out of touch with your average American:
As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to “generational theft.” F.D.R.’s New Deal had been an abject failure.
This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus’s popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.
This Republican Party of ideas, though, this party that Ebersole said last week wants to welcome into the GOP fold those they disagree with, many are frothing at the mouth to throw out Sens. Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for holding their nose and supporting the stimulus package. This is not a party that stands for internal dissent, nationally or locally. I’m not sure how that invites Americans who support the stimulus bill into the GOP fold.
Even locally, consider R.B. Campbell’s story. If party insiders are correct - and I don’t doubt many wrong - Campbell’s chances of winning the local GOP’s endorsement for Lancaster County controller were in part significantly hampered by the fact that in the 2007 primary he ran and beat an endorsed Republican candidate for City Council. Local Republicans don’t stand for that type of insurrection, even when the rogue Republican beats the endorsed Republican at the ballot box.
Right now, the Republican brand doesn’t look or sound healthy. Many are going for the headline or cheap shot even though the American electorate saw through that during the campaign. Five months ago it was all about Obama pallin’ around with terrorists or whether or not he was a celebrity on par with Britney Spears, even as the economy took one gut shot after another.
But instead of changing the tone of the dialogue, this media circus continues today. At a fiscal responsibility summit at the White House, as housing foreclosures needed addressing and the stock market slumped and jobs get cut, President Obama’s former campaign opponent, John McCain, rose to ask a question.
Imagine … Republican lawmakers invited to the White House in front of press cameras and invited to ask the President a question.
And what did McCain ask? About tax cuts? How to improve access to health care? How best to turn around the fortunes of Detroit automakers?
No. It was about the president’s helicopter. From the NY Times:
Exhibit A was the program to replace the current Marine One helicopters, with costs mushrooming to $11.2 billion from $6.1 billion. The Defense Science Board issued a new study blaming “poor communication” about aircraft requirements between the government and contractors. Lockheed Martin declared Monday that it was “committed to the program’s success” and would meet any conditions imposed by an Obama administration review.
“Your helicopter is now going to cost as much as Air Force One,” Mr. McCain told Mr. Obama. “I don’t think there is any more graphic demonstration of how good ideas have cost taxpayers an enormous amount of money.”
I’ve been around politics to see a dare and a pander for a spot on cable news. The hope here is for Obama to be caught off guard, fumble his words or say something to expose his greed and love for more government spending.
Obama, though, did not take the bait.
“The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me,” he said. “Of course, I’ve never had a helicopter before, you know? Maybe I’ve been deprived and I didn’t know it.
“But I think it is in example of the procurement process gone amok. And we’re going to have to fix it.”
Embarrassment avoided, at least for Obama. McCain, on the other hand, came off petty after his defeat last November.
But what will we hear tonight in reax to Obama’s speech to Congress? A new direction for the Republican Party? Or the same ol’ same ol’?
Obama speaks at 9 p.m. I’ll have a cup of coffee by my side. I also invite everyone here to offer their thoughts on how the GOP brand can be “reinvented” or even if it should.
