Summing Up the Republicans

In the Jan. 16 issue of Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan writes about “How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics.” As someone who voted for Obama, and will again, I certainly hope he’s correct.

“You hear it everywhere,” Sullivan says. “Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor.”

For the moment, I’ll leave aside my own problems with the first Obama administration (which come from the left). Does anybody know an actual Independent? Do they exist outside a poll-taker’s imagination? As for the GOP, I agree with Sullivan that most of their complaints are based on fantasy.

Yes, unemployment is at terribly high levels, and the national debt is out of control. But the U.S. was on the verge of economic collapse and another Great Depression when George Bush was still in office. I haven’t forgotten that, and neither should you. I just hope Democrats won’t let the country forget it when we are barraged with dishonest Supreme Court-enabled PAC ads.

If you think I’m unfair to the court--well, I suppose you wouldn’t be reading this if you did--check out E.J. Dionne’s Feb. 5 column about, take your pick, the court’s naiveté or skulduggery.

An aside: I agree with the one good idea Rick Perry offered during his woeful campaign--allowing each new president to pick two Supreme Court Justices and retiring the two with the most seniority. Nobody should have a life term in a democracy. Who coached Perry on this? He obviously lacks the wisdom to have come up with it on his own.

There’s a lot more Republicans find fault with about Obama but in general they contend he has made things worse. Mostly, that’s just not true. And what he has accomplished has been in spite of the purely partisan roadblock led by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Kentucky’s senior senator, McConnell, has even vowed openly his determination to deny the President re-election no matter what the cost, the country be damned.

I think that about sums the Republicans up.