GOP Blues - Where We Went Wrong - By Dick Armey

[kpete]

GOP Blues
Where We Went Wrong

By Dick Armey
Sunday, October 29, 2006; Page B01

Somewhere along the road to a "permanent majority," the Republican Revolution of 1994 went off track. For several years, we had confidence in our convictions and trusted that the American people would reward our efforts. And they did.

But today, my Republican friends in Congress stand on the precipice of an electoral rout. Even the best-case scenarios suggest wafer-thin majorities and a legislative agenda in disarray. With eight days before the election, House speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi has already begun her transition planning.

Where did the revolution go astray? How did we go from the big ideas and vision of 1994 to the cheap political point-scoring on meaningless wedge issues of today -- from passing welfare reform and limited government to banning horsemeat and same-sex marriage?

The answer is simple: Republican lawmakers forgot the party's principles, became enamored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy. Now, the Democrats are reaping the rewards of our neglect -- and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701482.html

[Stephanie]

1. "Dick Armey"

Why don't they drop the name "Republican" and just run on that?

[peekaloo]

4. His name always makes me giggle.

*giggle*

[MannyGoldstein]

2. A Raging Success

The Rethug Revolution that began with Ronald Reagan was extraordinarily evil from the start - it's all about the Predator Class sodomizing the Middle Class. End of story.

It has been extremely successful. We went from one full-time job per middle-class family to two. To disguise this, we moved from measuring individual-worker income to measuring family income. Well done!

The Rethug Revolution has spread like wildfire - today, even most "Democrats" believe that it's very good fun to sodomize the Middle Class - witness NAFTA and the other "free" trade, the new bankruptcy law, the war in Iraq which they won't send their own kids into, and so forth.

Armey is wrong - the Rethug Revolution has been a raging success - and will continue to be for some time.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. We Feel Your Pain, Dick!

We feel your pain, Dick, and we revel in it. We hope to increase it when federal prosecutors finally get a shot at investigating your corrupt former colleagues and handing out indictments. We look forward to reversing the social-darwinist policies put in place by your former colleagues and by the malefactors, ideologues, and gross incompetents in the executive Branch.

We look forward to laying bare republican corruption before the American citizen--electorate.

We look forward to seeing those right-wing judges your party appointed to the federal bench throw the book at Republican legislators, aides, and lobbyists. I bet your former pals from your Congressional days will wish that they'd thought of defendants' rights, then, Hah! Hah!

And when your playmates start whining about what those nasty Democrats did to you, we'll remember all those things you did to us and the rest of the country during the 1980's, the 1990's, and right up to January, 2007.

There'll be a time for pity for Corrupt-ican and Conserva-crook politicos, but it ain't now or for the foreseeable future.

:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:

[Donkeykick]

5. Notice that Dick Armey wrote:

When we get back to being the party of limited government, putting a national agenda ahead of parochial short-term politics, we will again be a party that the American voters will trust to deal with the serious challenges facing our nation.

Tucker Carlson said the same thing--only when he said it, it was with more bite!

I knew that this would eventually happen. Just one reason the religious right is going to stay home this time.

[dkofos]

6. Dick finally gets it

The answer is simple: Republican lawmakers forgot the party's principles, became enamored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy.

Just like the Dems before them.

This time we need to hold the Dems accountable for their votes.
If they don't vote the peoples conscience, the people should vote them OUT.

[DaveT]

7. Armey is offering an excellent analysis

of the political situation.

Of course I disagree with his value judgments about Reaganism and Gingrichism -- but as far as the dynamics of Congress and elections, he is spot on.

The Contract With America never had a chance to be adopted in full because the GOP's campaign contributors do not want to stop making money off the Federal Treasury. That is the one element that Armey does not mention as he condemns his erstwhile colleagues for giving up on limited government. Otherwise, he accurately describes how the Gingrich "revolution" took power based on principle (in my opinion a wrong-headed principle, but definitely a philosophical proposition about limited government) -- and then abondoned that principle.

In his looking ahead to the coming battle between Speaker Pelosi and President Lame Duck Shrub -- he omits the likelihood of Shrub using the veto to stymie the Democratic majority. But the issues he identifies will almost certainly constitute the battlefield for the next two years.

I especially appreciate Armey's admission about the silliness of wedge issues.

A worthy and honorable essay from the kind of opponent that true Democracy requires. Once upon a time Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater were personal friends. Without any kind of respect for the truth or each other, politics is civil war.

If we can win an election and get our votes counted, instead of emulating the criminals who have been milking the Federal Treasury with earmarks and bogus wars this past decade, we need to end the civil war and return to civil politics.

[kpete]

8. Here, here DaveT

and welcome!

[SalmonChantedEvening]

9. All these scandals and abuses of power aren't youthful indiscretions?

Or election tactics by the eveel librulz? Not growing pains?

Cmon Dick, you disappoint me. Not one mention of Bill Clinton. I'm crushed.

You never went astray, silly person. The whole 1994 house victory WAS based on sloganeering and cheap political point scoring. Family Values, my Aunt Martha's ashtibula. You rode in on the promise to turn the clock back to a time that never existed, and gave the reigns of power to a group of zealots, bullies and other assorted suckups. Now you wish to absolve yourself by saying the people you praised for 12 years have in just the last 4 months have abandoned you?

Mule muffins.

Savor that anchor you've tied yourself to. Sink. We'll all wave.

We promise.

[Solly Mack]

10. What a crock of shit. The GOP in Congress today are no different

than the GOP in 1994.

The same garbage then that they are now.

This spectacle of vapors that laments the 'oh,woe is me', but what has the GOP become, let us go back to our roots, phony self-introspection gives me gas.

I fart all over them.

[kurth]

11. Cry me a fucking river

Why aren't these treasonous greedy pigs in jail?

[peacetalksforall]

12. "...Democrats are reaping the rewards of our neglect - -"

Armey - Democrats MAY reap the rewards of your crimes - if there are no more crimes - in the form of voter theft and obstruction.

You tried to soften your message by saying 'neglect'. The truth is it was your pompous, arrogant criminal acts and filthy tricks of legislation and media partnership.

Yes, the crime of media partnership in the form of cover-up, avoidance, ommission, and twisting goes on today and will right up to the minute before the polls open, all day long, and all the days after until the public wakes up to the crimes and deception of right wing networks and newspapers on behalf of right wing criminality.

[Cha]

13. Any party that thinks they're going to

have a "permanent majority"(I don't care how many goddamed diebold machines they have) is too full of it not to fall off their fucking pedestal.