Shrumming Down America

Damn! Seems like all of the Clintonoid retreads are crawling out from under their rocks. This pearl of wisdom from Robert Shrumm:

Attack of the Zombie Republicans

So after all the bipartisan ambience generated by the White House, the stimulus package passed the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. The President says he’ll win over some Republicans in the Senate, but Arizona Republican John Kyl claims GOP support there is already “eroding.”

They won’t admit it, but like the de facto leader of their party, Rush Limbaugh, Republicans want the President to “fail.” Their arguments—if one can dignify them as such—are by turns petty, dishonest or ignorant, ahistorical and ugly.

Listen up, folks. Methinks Shrumm is on to something, and no one could possibly know better -- after all, his ilk wrote the book when it comes to pettiness, dishonesty, ignorance, and... um, ahistorical-ness? And let's not even talk ugly.

The pettiest point was their complaint about the modest funding for birth control in the original version of the House stimulus bill. Heaven forbid—or at least Pat Robertson does—that the poor would have access to family planning. So at the President’s request, the provision was removed; the funding will come later in a different piece of legislation.

Yeah, well, I'm no Pat Robertson, especially when it comes to the baby-killing issue -- in fact, I'm all for any program which prevents Liberal assholes from breeding. But it takes a special kind of fuckwit to keep a straight face while explaining to me why birth control should be part of a stimulus bill. Will this bill require taxpayer-funded condoms to be "ribbed... for her pleasure"? Is that the kind of stimulus we're talking about? For Christ's sake...

At least their quick, cheap hit on contraception lacked the intellectual slovenliness of their other objections. Once and future presidential candidate Mitt Romney told the GOP House retreat that the size of the recovery package threatened to set off hyperinflation. Either he was intentionally deceptive or, like George W. Bush, he slept through economics classes at Harvard Business School.

Gee. How non-petty is that? You're sooooo fucking clever, Shrumm. My knee hurts from the slapping. As for the intellectual slovenliness of the Republican's (and my) objection, I ask this: if you're so in favor of public funding of contraception, why are you hiding the provision for it in a stimulus bill? Why not introduce legislation specifically for that program? Face it -- you're afraid the American public will oppose it, so you do what duplicitous DC cowards always do: you quielty slip it in some other legislation and hope no one notices. Well, someone noticed this time. Too fucking bad. If there was any public support for your free government rubbers program it would still be in the bill. But there's not, so you blame... the Republicans? Tell me about intellectual slovenliness sometime.

The danger now is not inflation, but a descent into deflation. An economy with a paralyzed private sector needs public spending to create demand, production, and jobs.

But spending won’t work, according to the conservative oppositionists. Look at the New Deal, they say, it failed! This Republican fiction assumes that in 1936 Americans suffered from mass delusion as they reelected FDR in a huge landslide. Apparently voters hadn’t noticed his conspicuous failure in office.

In fact, as I’ve pointed out before, from 1933 through 1937, unemployment declined year on year in what was then the largest period of uninterrupted growth in American history; the Dow-Jones Industrial average rose nearly 400 percent. The New Deal only faltered afterwards, in 1938, as the President prematurely moved toward a balanced budget with less stimulative spending—precisely the course the Romneys, Kyls and Republican ideologues now demand.

Forgive my ugly, ignorant ahistorical-ness, but if government spending results in economic strength, after eight long years of beltway Republicans spending our money like, well, like Democrats, by Shrumm's so-called logic this should already be the strongest economy in world history. Maybe I'm missing something; perhaps economic prosperity only occurs when we give billions of dollars worth of condoms to ACORN, or something like that.

And on and on it goes... until Shrumm gets to (what I assume is) his point:

In light of all this, I’m not in as bipartisan a mood these days as President Obama. But I think he really means it when he says he wants to be. He doesn’t lose his temper so I’ll bet he keeps trying. In the end, he’ll agree to some additional changes in the stimulus and it will pass the Senate too—with or without substantial Republican support. And if Obama’s extended hand is met by a Republican clenched fist, the President will only strengthen his hand with the American people—while Republicans further weaken theirs.

Let's talk about extended hands. Exactly how much hand-extending, bipartisanship and compromise occurred on his side of the aisle during the past 8 years?

Just 27 percent of Americans gave the GOP a favorable rating in December. That’s almost a Bush league low, but they can go down from there—and seem determined to do so.

How much lower? I dunno... how about 9% -- you know, the approval rating of the Democrat-controlled congress?

They even called a press conference to charge that the stimulus bill might aid illegal immigrants. Why pass up an opportunity for more of the Hispanic-bashing that cost them so dearly in the last campaign?

Alas, the mandatory charge of racism. That should make the Republicans cave in. Thankfully, I'm not a Republican.

Right now, Republicans are out of ideas, offering little more than resentment and right wing talking points. Maybe Frum can come up with a substantive agenda for them. Or maybe Republicans are just brain dead. In that case, the voters will surely put more of them out of their misery in 2010 and 2012.

Well, he's right about one thing: Republicans are out of ideas. At least good ideas. If the best they can do is offer up tired, washed-up, career beltway pimps like John McCain, they can look forward to spending the rest of their miserable lives in the minority.

And what, pray tell, is the Democrat party's advice to Republicans? Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. God forbid they might pick up a few ideas.