I like Bob Johnson’s take on why we had our asses handed to us last night, but one thing most liberals won’t admit is that the Republicans deserve a lot of credit. I know that it’s hard to give credit to a party that decided to obstruct everything even before Obama was sworn in, and in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic collapse of their own making, no less. It’s hard to credit an underground smear campaign to question the president’s religious faith and U.S. citizenship. It’s hard to credit a near-uniform decision to oppose a stimulus bill to give the economy a heartbeat again. It’s hard to take seriously, let alone credit, their decision to talk about pulling the plug on grandma. Their astroturfing of townhall meetings with shouting loons is hard to credit. Their characterization of the Wall Street reforms as another bailout is hard to credit. Their freakout on ACORN over some doctored film footage is hard to credit. It’s hard to give credit for their refusal to allow up or down votes for weeks on bills that they wound up supporting overwhelmingly. I could go on for quite a while listing the cynical and dilatory and dishonest things the Republicans have done since Obama became president, none of which are easy to credit. But, it worked.
They knew the left would get dispirited and frustrated and start fighting amongst themselves. They knew their own base would love it and reward them for it. They knew the media wouldn’t be an honest referee. They knew that in a bad economy, white majority America would respond to their ACORN/Henry Louis Gates Jr./New Black Panther Party/Shirley Sherrod/Health-Care-is-for-minorities/Sharia Law/Ground Zero mosque/illegal immigration themes. And they knew that if they only stuck to the plan, there wouldn’t be a damn thing the Democrats could do about it. And there wasn’t. They went scorched Earth, and if you’re honest, we didn’t have the tools to combat them.
So, before you go blaming this policy or that decision, be honest. The Republicans deserve a lot of the credit for their victory. They can be proud of themselves.
