Republican Stupidity

It appears the Republicans are not learning the lesson of 2006, and are pushing towards the center as opposed to embracing conservatism. Three key indicators of this:

• The White House has announced that pro-amnesty Florida Senator Mel Martinez will head the RNC as RNC chair, while still holding his Senate seat. This is a bad decision. Michael Steele would have made a much better choice, and Sen. Martinez will further anger the conservative base of the party.
• It looks like Boehner is gaining steam to remain as minority leader. While most people think Blunt is out at Whip, Boehner appears to have a lock over the more conservative Mike Pence.
• Kay Bailey Hutchinson is poised to become the head of the Republican Policy committee in the Senate, the committee responsible for pushing major policy initiatives. Hutchinson is not pro-life, pro-amnesty, and is not what the party needs at this point.

All these signs point to bad things for the Republicans. The Democrats may be self-destructive, but the Republicans are not positioning themselves to do any better in 2008 if the above trends are any indication.

The Democrat’s quandary

Having won both houses of Congress, the Democrat’s face a rather large internal struggle for the future of the party. An LA Times story today chronicles how left-leaning blogs, organizations such as the ACLU and MoveOn.org, and liberal activists who helped fund the Democrat’s in 2006 see the party as owing them, and are looking for passage of such left-leaning policies as gun control, policies that provide funding for poor people to kill their unborn babies, the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, repeal of the Patriot Act, Universal Health Care, and policies that discourage the outsourcing of jobs oversees. The Democratic leaders, however, see these issues for what they are — politically explosive issues which would lead to their inevitable defeat in 2008. If they don’t pass some of this legislation, they could discourage their base and cause them to stay home in 2008, or support some third party candidate.

Let’s not forget what happened in 1993, following the election of Bill Clinton, and the first completely Democrat-controlled government since the Carter administration. Clinton pushed too far and alienated the country with debates over Gays in the military, Hillary-care, and Nanny-gate. This paved the way for the Republican Contract with America and the 1994 Republican Revolution. Let’s face it, as much as Bill Clinton was a total scumbag and instituted many a bad policy, he was a very shrewd politician. I would dare to say that San Fran Nan and Dingy Harry are much less shrewd than he is, and will have a difficult time balancing the appeal to their base and the attempt to stay in the center. It should be fun to watch.