GOP: The Incompetent Scrubs On the Sideline

[Mr. Ected]

In battle, in sports, in business and in many other areas of life, faith in leadership can get you through tough times. It’s a tribal survival instinct to want to rally around the leader.

Yesterday, the AP released polling numbers showing that for the first time in five years, a plurality of Americans say the country is moving in the right direction. Those numbers are impressive given that we have six million unemployed, Chrysler is reportedly about to announce bankruptcy, GM is closing most of its plants over the summer and the stock market continues to wallow at levels 40 percent off its peak. For the moment, Obama seems to be providing people the reassuring leadership they need in tough times, much as FDR did through the Great Depression.

So, speaking strictly in terms of political strategy, how can Republicans respond?

They can rally behind obstructionism in Congress, but only 29 percent approve of how Republicans in Congress are responding to the economy; only 7 percent “strongly approve.”

They can depict Obama as weak, but according to AP, 76 percent of Americans would describe Barack Obama as a strong leader. Just 23 percent would not.

They can make snide remarks about the First Lady, who has an unfavorable rating of a whopping 8 percent.

They can attack the president’s intelligence and competence, but 79 percent of Americans say Obama understands at least somewhat well the major issues confronting the country.

They can argue that the economic crisis isn’t really as bad as Obama and most leading economists claim, but 91 percent of Americans reject that approach, saying the state of the economy is very or extremely important to them personally.

In other words, nothing has any traction at the moment. It’s just too early to be in all-out attack mode, in large part because Obama hasn’t done anything that would make such an attack effective or even legitimate. And yet the Republicans attack anyway.

In part, that strategy is being driven by anger, but market factors also play a role. Thanks to a vacuum in elected GOP leadership, a large part of the conservative leadership is actually commercial rather than political in nature. They reap great profit by stirring up the base, regardless of whether the timing is right. Limbaugh, Fox News — they make millions by getting their 20 percent of the population almost literally up in arms. Meanwhile the other 80 percent look on and wonder whether they’ve lost their minds.

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In sports terms, most of the country is gathered in the huddle, looking to the quarterback for the play, wanting to have faith that’s he’s going to lead them down the field and into the end zone in a great comeback.

And they really resent the scrubs on the sideline — people who are supposedly on the same team, who were benched for incompetence — chanting “It’ll never work, it’ll never work.”

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2009/04/24/its-too-early-to-attack-obama-but-gop-cant-help-itself/