We screwed up and got punished. Now we have two clear choices, We can listed to NEWT and rebuild a political machine that can win or we can live in the past with our heads in the sand (or other places) and lose.
I voted for Newt’s “Contract with America” crowd. They got up there and pretty quickly forgot who sent them; got “into” the beltway trance and got derailed. I’m pretty much cynical now after watching the media finagle to get McCain for the GOP nominee, then finagle shamelessly to destroy Governor Palin and brand her shamefully as an inbred Alaskan Ignorant Hick beneath them. We’ll soon get to see how “experienced” and “smart” Obama is, and also how “smart” and “savvy” Gaffer Joe is on foreign policy.
I am for following Newt and his plan for the future for the GOP. We need to get back to the basics that we won the House and Senate in 1994. As soon as term limits took out some good office holders, they were replaced by the spend and spend some more crowd.
If there is one bright spot in this debacle it is the fact that the remedies Obama has proposed will not work for him and the Democrats any better than they did for Jimmy Carter. Judging by his first missteps he may blunder us back into another energy crisis.
There is nothing in this worn out trick bag that will create another permanent majority for the Democrats. They are pushing warmed over Keynesian Demand-side solutions on an economy that is already on the verge of a much higher inflation rate.
The key to a comeback will be ideas, ideas, ideas. What is needed is a “A Contract for the American Middle Class”. Lowry is both right and wrong about tax cuts. Tax cuts have been the only policy triumph during the Bush Administration. The GOP needs to link Middle Class anxieties to major entitlement reform, tax reform, energy reform and trade policy.