Probably the most amazing thing about the ongoing Republican domination of the political arena lo this dark decade has been the almost complete role-reversal it has implemented with the currently hapless Democrats.
For years the meme has been that the Republicans are the "daddy" party: strong on defense, thrifty on spending, pragmatic, able to make the tough decisions, etc. The party of reality and empiricism, principle, hard facts and numbers over feelings. Or so went the CW.
Of course, that made the Democrats are the "mommy" party: caring and nurturing to the point of squishiness, empathic at the expense of pragmatism and tough decision-making, soft on discretionary spending, willing to compromise on defense if everybody agreed to play nice for a while longer. The party of intuition, compromise, and weasel-words, run by bien pensant ideologues with sociology, urban planning, and philosophy degrees, because Biz Ad was too Establishment, man.
Leaving aside the inherent misogyny of this false dichotomy, we can look at how George W. Bush and his crew have been running things, in terms of results and processes, and see quite clearly that this meme has been effectively turned on its head.
Yes, we're running two wars in roughly the same theater, and attempting a monumental geopolitical revision of that area; and yes, these guys are hard for tax cuts like Ron Jeremy for Nina Hartley. But considering their increasingly outrageous deficit spending (which deliberately doesn't even include a low-ball estimate of war costs), and the inability to decrease discretionary spending, the tax cuts look more and more like the sop to the ultra-wealthy that they are, rather than a true economy-boosting measure.
Bush, considering his elite education and Harvard MBA, is apparently completely unable to discuss even simple economic matters, or else he thinks he has to heavily water it down so us rubes will get it. He seems proud of the fact that he is ignorant of most basic world facts and current events, and doesn't read newspapers (or, unless he hides it well, books). To listen to him describe his decision-making process for everything, it all involves either praying or trusting his gut. And look how well that's worked for him (and us). He is the ultimate icon of legacy and anti-meritocracy, heading a party which, for better or worse, has always been a champion of true individual excellence and merit over all else.
The results of the Bush administration's policies, foreign and domestic, speak for themselves loud and clear. Barring a post-election miracle turnaround in Iraq, it's an unmitigated disaster, and no matter how many times Bush babbles useless bromides about freedom being on the march or hard work being done by good people, it's still a bust, and a mistake. It's damaged our credibility with allies that, like it or not, we will need in the relatively near future economically, and it's stretched our army perilously thin. If they're seriously thinking of taking on Iran in any near future, they're either stupid or crazy. Or both.
Domestically, as the Social Security privatization propaganda machine is demonstrating, is at least as bad. After a laughably ridiculous "town hall" meeting in which Bush did little but lie, he couldn't even share a few numbers from his plan with the townsfolk. Why? Because he has no numbers. Oh, there are probably numbers somewhere; they have people to do that. But Bush clearly has no clue as to what they are. Cheney will sit down with Bush and a box of flash cards when that point of the marketing plan comes up. Right now the whole point of stirring up the privatization debate -- aside from distracting people from daily suicide bombings in Iraq -- is to get them thinking about eventually doing away with Social Security, which is the conservatives' wet dream. They'd rather just let folks keep their cash and spend it on lottery tickets.
So they've been entirely dishonest about the numbers of every major initiative, from Medicare to Iraq to deficit reduction projections. It literally never stops with them. When called on any of it, they lapse into weasel-words, the same as they do when called on regarding the planning and decision-making processes for all these initiatives. Bush has been shameless from day one about pooh-poohing an idea until it looks like it has traction, then it was his idea all along. He was against appointing the 9/11 Commission before he was for it. (And then he picked Henry Kissinger to head it. Apparently Idi Amin was busy.) He was against testifying for the commission before he was for it, and even then, not only could he not go on the record, but he had to have Cheney with him. Gee, why not just take out an ad saying "We just have to make sure we've got our stories straight".
The discrepancies surrounding the lack of WMD evidence to back up the stovepiped intel have been handled no less cynically. When they can't quite seem to keep their stories straight about whether or not they had the goods on Saddam, there'd be another terror alert. And now that it's official, and the WMD search has been called off, the lapdog media slavishly puts it off the front page. Shameful.
And the way they've gotten away with this is by exploiting the politics of emotion, the mindless road-rage dynamics personified by right-wing talk-radio orcs like Limbaugh, Savage, and Hannity. It's very seductive, and very anti-empirical. It's impossible to prove a negative, of course, but just as an intellectual exercise, imagine Gore or Kerry trying to get away with half the nonsense Bush and Cheney have. You'd be hearing daily about feckless "Democrat wars" (as we did briefly, during Kosovo) endangering American troops' lives, and thus heuristically reinforcing the rotten notion that Democrats (and "liberals") hate the military so much that putting soldiers in harm's way means little or nothing at all to them. (This, in spite of the enormous inequity of Democrats vs. Republicans who have actually served in the military.) You'd be hearing about reckless Democrat deficit spending. You'd be hearing calls for independent counsels to investigate every business contact Gore or Kerry ever had, and how they were directly profiting from their office. Yet how many times does Halliburton have to get caught stealing taxpayer dollars before either someone goes to jail, or Cheney's connection gets scrutinized, rather than merely fluffed periodically as a filler talking point?
Keep in mind, the Republicans are the winners; they control the White House and both houses of Congress, and have for several years, in addition to six years of Congressional majorities. Yet they're still pissed. They whine about "obstructionist Democrats" blocking their judges, when the fact is they did the same thing to Clinton far more often. They whine about Democrats disagreeing with their idiot plans to fuck up the country even more, when that's all the Democrats really have the power to do anymore, is to disagree. They are the sorest winners in history. Why do you think that is? Could it be that that's all that mobilizes their base anymore? Certainly it can't be the facts; policies, results, processes. It's fear, and tribalism, and various strains of religious hooey that we'd do better to start vaccinating ourselves against.
Bottom line, there is very little true "daddy" party left in these guys, which is why they are truly ripe for the picking by a reform-minded Democrat Party that seems to have learned its lesson about profligate entitlement spending and such.
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