As noted in by Henrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker, a headline in the Village Voice, the day after the Massachusetts election, read like this: “SCOTT BROWN WINS MASS. RACE, GIVING GOP 41-59 MAJORITY.”
And this: Kevin Drum reports on Bruce Bartlett's response to Governor Pawlenty's likely race for president in 2012. Bartlett, a former Bush adviser, argues that Pawlenty,
Like all Republicans these days, Pawlenty wants to have it every possible way: complain about the deficit while ignoring everything his party did to create it (Medicare Part D, two unfunded wars, TARP, earmarks galore, tax cuts up the wazoo, irresponsible regulatory and monetary policies that created the recession that created the deficit, etc.), illogically insisting that tax cuts are a necessary part of deficit reduction, and never proposing any specific spending cuts.
I think that Pawlenty's ideas pretty much echo those of the present-day Republican Party. And they have only 41 votes in the Senate----a majority in a representative body where it takes 60 votes to move nearly all major legislation.
With these ideas, no party should have even 41 votes in the world's oldest democracy.
And yet the headlines today about the Obama budget are almost hysterical about the mounting deficit, ignoring completely how we got there with Bush's slashing tax cuts, unfunded social programs, and two unfunded wars, and, despite this, today the Republicans want more tax-cuts and to prosecute our wars more aggressively.
To paraphrase Congressman Barney Frank, Democrat, MA, "On what planet do the Republican Party, nearly half of the American voters and many among the media spend most of their days?"
Why should anyone with the slightest bit of sanity find the Republican Party a credible alternative?
The only reason I can think of is the sight of the Democratic Party being unable or unwilling to take advantage of the present situation and quickly vote for the Senate version of health care reform in the House and push aggressively forward on everything else.
But the odds are they won't. I can hear their knees knocking all the way down here near the U.S.-Mexico border.
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