Robert Knight of the American Civil Right Union says that it is time for Republicans to “get off the psychiatrists’ couches” and take it to President Obama by embracing the Tea Party. While polls show that the Tea Party has a record low approval rating, with a majority of Americans now holding an unfavorable view of the movement, Knight claims it will lead the party to victory.
But by “surrendering” on fiscal issues and failing to block “Obama’s bizarre social activism” of “ramming a radical, anti-Christian social agenda down America’s throat, especially in the military,” Knight writes, Republicans may lose again.
Also, Benghazi.
The rationale for this sorry deal is that “the Republican brand” got burned badly in the shutdown. So why risk blame for another one? By caving in early, and for less than $100 billion in new spending, which is chump change in Washington, the GOP can instead put the horrors of Obamacare back on the front burner right through 2014. They are counting on the Tea Party and other fiscal conservatives to get over it quickly and focus on their common foe. GOP strategists seem far more easily frightened by bad reactions from liberals than from the people who delivered them a sweeping, historic electoral victory in 2010 and who could do so again – unless they tune out in disgust.
Maybe the strategists are right, though. In a toxic media environment where even good sound bites are ignored or twisted into nonsense, the Ryan-Murray deal could be the best of bad options.
That’s a shame, because the GOP is holding powerful cards, starting with public outrage over Obamacare and the lies that facilitated it. There is also the disturbing and widening Benghazi scandal, and a growing list of economic victims of the White House’s war on the private sector, including coal miners and millions of others who have been out of work for years.
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Finally, Mr. Obama is ramming a radical, anti-Christian social agenda down America’s throat, especially in the military, with near-zero Republican opposition. Polls rise and fall, and Obama’s numbers are dismal right now. Congress’s are even worse. Time will tell if the GOP strategy of surrendering any immediate hope of cutting federal spending and ignoring Mr. Obama’s bizarre social activism will yield long-term political benefits for Republicans, such as capturing the Senate and cementing their House majority en route to 2016.
Democrats are on the offensive, seemingly unbothered by possible repercussions at the ballot box. The question is, will the Republicans get off the psychiatrists’ couches soon enough to head off further damage to our formerly self-governing republic?
