Republicans Don't Want Power

My, but Captain Ed was tearing up Senate Republicans last night and into this morning. He sounds like the husband who walks in on his wife with her legs in the air beneath the milkman.

In the former he urges the defunding of the GOP unless and until Fristy and the boys force a showdown over the Donk filibuster:

Not. One. Dime. The next time Ken Mehlman sends you a request for money, that's the message he needs to get back [that's precisely what I did this morning]. We ponied up in 2004, and in 2002, and in 2000. The GOP not only has not delivered, its current leadership won't even try. Frist and Rick Santorum claim they don't have the votes. Balderdash - they don't have the leadership to get the votes. I'm not going to fund or support people who won't try to win, especially when the issue is so important.

Not. One. Dime. We're not in an election year, so this makes it easy for the Republicans to get this message to party leaders. No balls, no Blue Chips, boys. I don't mean just for the Senate, either. I mean for the entire Republican party. Feeding a fever may be good medicine, but feeding a failure only makes it last longer. Perhaps hunger will work where courage has so obviously failed.

Not. One. Dime. And when a vote does come, those Republicans who wind up supporting the minority's extortion over the majority in defiance of the Constitution will never see another dime from me -- but their opponents will, at every level of contest. Honestly, with Republicans like these in the Senate, we may as well have Democrats.

Not. One. Dime. If Bill Frist can't lead the GOP, then let's get rid of him now and find someone with the stomach for it. As long as he dithers, he'll never see a dime out of me for any election.

In the latter he really unloads on the Majority Leader:

If Frist wants to join a club, let him apply to the BPOE. He gave away the momentum on this issue to play Mr. Nice Guy with people who have never played nice in their lives. Leadership? I call that idiocy...That's the Frist Era for you: The Age of Lost Opportunities. This Hill report shows that Frist doesn't have the capacity to lead the majority in the Senate. Frist must step down immediately and the Republicans need to replace him with someone who doesn't get clammy at the sight of Harry Reid wiping his glasses. If Frist isn't man enough to resign, the GOP should remove him anyway.

The only caveat I'd slap on that verbal beating is that I doubt if there's any leadership alternative to Frist that would have any more testicular fortitude than he has. I remember well rubbing my hands together in gleeful anticipation when Trent Lott took over for Bob Dole - at last, we were going to have a real conservative in charge of the Senate! But Lott proved to be a bumbling, gaffe-prone, pork-addicted bust. That's why I joined the drive for his removal from the ML post following the Strom Thurmond birthday kerfuffle. I had no idea if Frist would do any better, but I figured at least he'd keep his foot out of his mouth.

Frist has been successful in that regard. But otherwise he's just as much Harry Reid's bitch as Lott was Tom Daschle's. And I think that would be the case with Rick Santorum, Mitch McConnell, or, to include Morrissey's suggestion, Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Wow, think about that for a minute: being Harry Reid's bitch. That's like stripping down to studded leather undies, donning a dog collar, and getting on all fours for Barney Fife.

Rather fitting imagery, all things considered.

But it's been a long time arriving at this ignominious moment.

I was blogging back in Clinton's second term. It wasn't called blogging back then, and I posted on message boards, but the form was the same.

Probably my most common lament was how it was that we could have control of Congress and still be dominated by that fat, lecherous hillbilly. How could this be, I asked? Wasn't that arrangement, in George Will's famous depiction of the reverse a decade earlier, "a Democrat island in a sea of Republican power"?

No, it wasn't. And the dismayingly common thread between the two was the same phenomenon that is bedeviling us now: Democrat ruthlessness and Republican cowardice.

Dems have always wanted power too much, and GOPers have always wanted power too little. It's been the case for the past seventy years, and I doubt if it will ever change in my lifetime. All the rest of politics is transitory faces and ritualistic artifice. The only reason we're technically in power is because, in quality of practitioners and choice of tactics, the Donks have, compared to the mastery of Sick Willie, fallen down the proverbial stairs and proverbially pooped their proverbial pants.

Our people, by contrast, have lost all cover for what I call their "personal inertia."

When Clinton was president, Republicans (particularly in the Senate) could bend over and grab the ankles for him, and make the excuse that, "We don't have the White House; if we can get that back, things will be different." (Now you know why five Republicans voted to acquit on one impeachment article and ten voted to acquit on the other).

Then George W. Bush was elected president in 2000.

But the GOP also lost four senate seats, and then Jim Jeffords signed with the Democrats as a free agent, and Senate 'Pubbies said, "We need majority control back; then things will be different."

So we picked up two senate seats in 2002 and regained the gavels.

But then the Dems sank to unconstitutional filibusters and open, brazen obstructionism. And Senate Pachyderms said, "We need bigger majorities; then we'll be able to push through our agenda, and things will be different."

So we picked up FOUR MORE senate seats last November and gained a double-digit majority in the upper chamber.

Presto! No more excuses. Time to rock & roll, right?

Nope. The excuse now? "We have to plan for when we're in the minority again."

Trust me, people who are preoccupied with what to do when they're out of power in the future are in a big hurry to arrive at that destination.

This is why Senator McQueeg's blowing raspberries at the grassroots has ignited this firestorm. Our elected representatives, at least on the Senate side, have been busted. They don't want to be in the majority. They don't want power. The approval of their political enemies means more to them than the disapprobation of the people who sent them there.

It's like battered wife syndrome: "If I say enough bad things about my own party, and vote with the Democrats enough, maybe I'll get on the 'A' list of the Georgetown cocktail party circuit and regular bookings with Russert and Matthews and Stephanopoulos." And, with the exception of the aforementioned Arizona Avenger, it never quite happens, and in the meantime the "husband" continues to have his abusive way and gets what "he" wants.

It's a neurosis. It's like an inoperable malignant tumor. It can't be excised; it can only grow, only the patient doesn't die, but instead is condemned to suffer in perpetuity.

Think this analysis harsh if you wish, but I don't know what other one to draw.

I've long been an advocate of keeping an eye on the "big picture" and not ripping apart our own side over individual issues differences that matter less than holding a majority coalition together. But this filibuster matter is beyond that. It's fundamental. As Matt Margolis commented over at B4B, "We. have. been. waiting. for. four. years."

It reminds me of analyses of the years immediately prior to the Civil War. Secession and armed conflict were inevitable because neither side wanted to listen to what the other had to say. Similarly, our base doesn't want to hear "wait, be patient, our leaders know what they're doing." That's what we've been told for the past two election cycles, and we've delivered our end. Now it's their turn, and they're still dragging their feet.

Sorry, we don't want to hear it anymore. We want to see action. ***NOW***. Otherwise the whole kit & kaboodle we voted for in '02 and '04 was just an empty bill 'o goods, a bait & switch, a fraud. And elected Republicans should know what their base does when they feel like they've been screwed by the Party: stay home next Election Day. In droves.

The vaunted GOP ground game was what produced these majorities. Rotsa ruck mounting another one until the base starts seeing a return on the investments they've already made.