A coming tsunami -- The Republicans' bankruptcy of ideas

[struggle4progress]

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 14, 2006
WASHINGTON

THE EMERGING Republican game plan for 2006 is ..: If the Democrats re-take Congress, it will mean, well, that the Democrats re-take Congress. (Cue lightning bolt and clap of thunder.)

.. They can't run on the war. They can't run on the economy .. Even social conservatives may be growing weary of outlawing gay marriage every other November. Nobody's buying the ownership society. Competence? Ethics? You kidding? ..

And so, to stave off the specter of Democratic rule, Karl Rove has decided that the only way to rally the Republican base is to invoke the specter of Democratic rule: Michigan Rep. John Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has spoken of investigating the president for high crimes and misdemeanors, and Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-Calif.) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) would get subpeona power. In short, unspecified horrors lurk behind every corner for the GOP if the Democrats take control and hold hearings on the Bush administration's relations with the oil and pharmaceutical industries. A sea of partisan vendetta, predict the Republicans, stretches to the horizon if the Democrats are allowed to win.

As a strategy, this has its shortcomings. It's not clear how many independents, or even conservatives, would warm to a campaign that focused on forestalling congressional oversight -- not now, with gasoline prices soaring and the U.S. military bogged down in a war with an increasingly undefinable mission ..

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060514_14meyer.7ede50f.html

[valerief]

1. They will PRAY for ideas. n/t

[Demeter]

2. BushCo Has Made Democratic Rule Very Attractive n/t

[yurbud]

3. they're hoping Iran attack will do it--or at least the terrorist attack to

justify hitting Iran.