Peggy Noonan: Pity Party (Repubs are falling apart!)

[dkf]

Pity Party
May 16, 2008

Big picture, May 2008:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid – detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

...

But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately, that there is another truth. "Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a mountain." Analyses of its predicament reflect an "investment in the Bush presidency," but "the public has just moved so far past that." "Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis." Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: "He can't articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it." The party, said Mr. Davis, must admit its predicament, act independently of the White House, and force Democrats to define themselves. "They should have some ownership for what's going on. They control the budget. They pay no price. . . . Obama has all happy talk, but it's from 30,000 feet. Energy, immigration, what is he gonna do?"

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

[Ecumenist]

1. Bwahahahahah-hahahahah!! I mean um, er-uh-uh...

Po'thangs... I hate to break it to ya but I've been saying bush was an inarticulate idiot for the last 8.5 years. It ain't new...he's an idiot and you guys kissed his ass so much, your lipprints are permanently marked on his rear end. :nopity:

[grasswire]

2. Noonan said "butt"

Ha!

[Me.]

3. Brilliant

And lovely to read. It's hard to admit, it being Peggy, but she has nailed it and it is music to my ears. The best line in the piece..."They brought Cheney in, and that was a mistake."

[Virginia Dare]

7. Who is this "they" that he speaks of?

who does he blame for bringing Cheney in? The party elders perhaps? That line intrigues me, there's a lot more meaning behind it.

[Me.]

11. I Suspect You Are Correct With 'Party Elders'

or the inside establishment elite. The money people who have had too much influence and ruined this country in their scramble to loot the treasury. The ones she says, "They are also – Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers – successful, well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way.

Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply."

[unapatriciated]

4. There is always Martial Law...

There is a possibility there will be an attempt to cancel the elections and the chimp and cheney can stay in charge
and then we're off to Iran

[Jim__]

5. McCain is a 3rd term for bush.

I like that as a campaign slogan.

[gratuitous]

6. Who wrote this for Peggy "Magic Dolphins" Noonan?

If she is aware of someone ghosting columns for her, she might get mad.

But the quote from Rep. Davis is spot on, and shouldn't be missed: "Member and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep-seated antipathy." True, true, true. I think Republican party pooh-bahs are starting to get the picture, but the pundits aren't seeing anything.

Although maybe the somnambulent press corpse is beginning to stir. Bush's despicable comments at the Knesset are getting some critical comments, and even some of the media chuckleheads are at least looking like they understand why "some people" might object to them. Of courese, they're about six years and $2 trillion too late, and just in time for a Democratic-controlled government, which you know damn well won't be getting the free ride the Republicans got from 1999 to 2007.

[Marr]

8. Huh? Noonan was front and center, cheering for the fool when he was actaually

*doing* all the things the Republicans are now paying for politically. Now she's pretending that she saw this coming?

She's truly a nitwit.

[stubtoe]

9. Fascinating. An obit, a hit piece, from one of their greatest (erstwhile) cheerleaders

and apologists.

Will the rest follow suit now that Noonan, of all Republican pundits, has broken trail?

[4themind]

10. To her small credit

She did, push back against Bush's 'spreading freedom to all the world' inauguration speech in 2004, and actually got quite a bit of flack for it by republicans at the time.