Check this out, written by Matthew's soon to be boss.
Well, guess what? They've demonstrated otherwise. No one -- no one -- can name a single front on which today's Republicans have shown even the simplest competence. They don't know how to manage an economy. They sure don't know how to balance a budget. They have no idea how to create jobs (though they do have a pretty strong sense of how to make them disappear). Their domestic-security measures have consisted of the usual emphasis on show over substance, first stealing a Democratic idea (the Department of Homeland Security) and then underfunding the result in some crucial respects -- a mistake for which I pray we never pay a price.It's going to be a damn interesting election.They don't understand the Bill of Rights, and their shills in the media obviously don't understand the relationship between the First Amendment and trademark law, as Blah-Blah O'Reilly's laughable lawsuit against the great Al Franken shows. They've done nothing to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink, and have, if anything, done damage to those resources. They've done nothing for the minorities Mr. Compassionate Conservative was supposedly courting in 2000, his speeches to the NAACP and the like transcribed by a tremulous media.
And now, it turns out, they don't know how to do the one thing they've spent 50 years convincing Americans that they and only they know how to do: fight a war. The war in Afghanistan is hardly won (did you notice the firefight the other day that left 14 dead?). And the war in Iraq is a fiasco that is fast becoming a huge political problem, worrying middle-of-the-road voters (who have figured out now that maybe alienating the rest of the world wasn't such a great idea after all) and exposing ideological fissures on the right (go read William Kristol and Robert Kagan's editorial in the current Weekly Standard, where they call for more troop strength and take several amusing implicit swipes as Donald Rumsfeld).
The Republicans don't know how to run a country. The party has become so inflamed by its ideological ardor that it no longer has the basic ability to do what a political party in a democracy does: advocate a view of the world, yes, but balance interests and constituencies in such a way as to show at least some regard for the common good. In Dwight Eisenhower's GOP, or Richard Nixon's (Watergate aside, of course), or even Ronald Reagan's and certainly Bush Senior's, there was always a sense that the Republicans, however conservative they may have been at heart, understood and respected the limits of putting ideology above all else.
"No one -- no one -- can name a single front on which today's Republicans have shown even the simplest competence."
I love this sort of stuff: it says so many amusing things ... about Democrats. I mean, even if this is true, then they're the party who can't seem to take the three branches of government away from such utter incompetents.
And before the Greens start smirking, remember: if -you're- so bright, why haven't you been able to supplant the Democrats?
Laugh while you can, monkey boy. Winning elections is a different skillset than actually governing. Of the two, I think the latter skill of governing effectively is far more important.
The skill of winning elections can be learned.
The GOP has destroyed everything good we had going in this country. If folks are, indeed, waking up to that point, then all the better.
We need to send them packing next year.