Do you remember when one of the big MSM critiques of Democrats was the lack of optimism they showed, how they were always scolding and negative about our future, and how Americans, who are fundamentally optimistic, couldn’t identify with the party and its candidates because of it? I do, but apparently [Eric Cantor] doesn’t, because I’ll be damned if he cracked more than a reluctant smile last night.
It’s not just Cantor and Boehner at the SOTU, it’s also Gingrich, Romney, Santorum and Paul in the debates. Those twice-weekly pissing matches are glum, overly serious affairs contrasting the grim meathook future of another four years of Barack Obama with an even darker apocalypse of program cuts and never-ending austerity under the Republicans….
I remember that critique of Democrats, too, and it wasn’t limited to the media. Recall Poppy Bush at the 1984 vice presidential debate:
Almost every place you can point, contrary to Mr. Mondale’s – I gotta be careful – but contrary of how he goes around just saying everything bad. If he sees — If somebody sees a silver lining, he finds a big black cloud out there. Whine on harvest moon!
But mistermix is absolutely right about contemporary Republicans being decline-obsessed miserabilists — and you really, really don’t want that to be your party’s public posture going into a presidential election, because in presidential elections Americans very much prefer to vote for hope.
And in addition to the people mistermix names, I’d add the guy Republicans think might save them. Really, wingnuts — this guy makes you say, “A star is born”?
“…On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true….
“In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.
“So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality….
The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them…”
Ready to kill yourself yet? I would be if I took this seriously.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
