Mirror, mirror

Remember when the president introduced his budget, and the Republicans got all high and mighty and decided they were going to introduce a budget too, so they came out and held up an 18-page booklet with no numbers or specific plans in it?

Yeah, I'm thinking that's about to happen again.

See, Obama on Wednesday let it be known that he was cutting $17 billion out of the budget that Congress has actually already passed. And just like they did a couple of weeks ago when he told his Cabinet secretaries to come up with $100 million in cuts, the Republicans all came out like banshees screeching that the cuts aren't enough.

No "good start," no "that's what I'm talkin' about" from the party of budget slashing, at least when they're in the minority. Just the usual NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO from the party of no.

Over the next couple of weeks, you'll have a chance to see what real budget cuts look like,

said House Minority Leader John Boehner -- the same House Minority Leader John Boehner who waved the little GOP budget thing around like it actually meant something. I think he said something similar then.

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to think if Barack Obama came out and announced he was giving a $100,000 tax credit to any self-employed individual who bought a gas-guzzling, oversized vehicle that weighs more than three tons fully loaded, the GOP would scream bloody murder.

Nothing is good enough for these guys. They seem to not understand that it's gonna take a while to undo the damage they and their boy president did to our economy. They seem to have forgotten that Obama said he had his people going through the budget line by line, and it's a big damn budget. It's not all gonna get changed at once. And having Republicans go through the budget with a red pen makes about as much sense as, oh, I don't know -- maybe putting the former judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association in charge of FEMA.

Of course, some Republicans are starting to get it -- maybe. In what can only be a very bizarre turn of events, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina -- who was only a few weeks ago leading one of Dick Armey's teabagging parties, stirring up the ill-informed by telling them of the outrageous tax burden they're forced to toil under because of Barack Obama.

But now, a mere three weeks later, McHenry is singing a different tune, telling Time magazine

Marginal tax rates are the lowest they've been in generations, and all we can talk about is tax cuts. The people's desires have changed, but we're still stuck in our old issue set.

And that's the truth. Tax rates are lower now than they were when Saint Ronnie was president. And they have been. Since Clinton.

But it's very strange to come out of the mouth of McHenry, an extremist conservative. I'm sure the Ayatollah Limbaugh will have something to say about it.

Maybe it was just an unguarded moment, or perhaps McHenry was suddenly overcome by the spirit of American democracy at its finest and had no choice but to tell the truth. And it's a truth that means the Republican party needs to be redesigning itself soon before some other party picks up the remnants of sanity the GOP has left in the ditches of its road to ruin and becomes a true opposition party.

But there's old Darth Cheney, saying it would be a mistake for Republicans to "moderate," because we all know that extremism is the best way to unite people.

You know, when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, 'Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'

Actually, Darth, the way you win is to start acting sane. The way you win is to act like you give a rat's ass about somebody other than yourself and your rich buds. The way you win is to stop wrapping yourself in an American flag and get your hands dirty with the real work to be done around here -- reinventing the country you nearly destroyed.

See, this isn't the land of soak 'em dry and get away while the gettin's good anymore. That's what November 4, 2008, meant. It meant a significant shift away from the era of trying to drown government in the bathtub so that the already rich can get even richer. It meant realizing that the playing field isn't level in this country, and never has been. It meant that a majority of voting Americans wanted to take steps to change what 30 years of conservative misrule had wrought.

Old Darth was right about one thing, though.

Some of the older folks who’ve been around a long time — like yours truly — need to move on and make room for that young talent that’s coming along,

he said. Too bad he doesn't realize that the ideas and attitude of those older folks need to move on too.

I suspect, though, that'll happen anyway. It's just that it's a lot harder when you don't do it willingly. And when you don't do it at all, well, progress doesn't stop if you do. Darth and the others, they stand a pretty good chance of being remembered, if they're remembered at all, as the folks who tried to remake America in their own image -- dark and secretive, bullying and abrasive. It almost worked.

We have a very long way to go to correct the errors of the past 30 years. And Obama isn't going to correct them all. Some of them, in fact, he's going to perpetuate. But he's not likely to send us spiraling back down that potholed path.

We may not know precisely where we're headed now -- but we know where we've been, and what a hellish, painful place that was. And we've got some pretty good ideas about where we need to be.

It'd just be so much easier if this shrill shell of a party would either remake itself for the 21st century, or get out of the way for a party that's ready for the future.

Either way, this Republican Party needs to stop peering into that magic mirror they got from all the closeted gay Republicans on their staffs and find one that'll give 'em a true reflection of what they've become.

Nah. I'm not holding my breath. Even accurate reflections can't sway the delusional.


News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press!

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Peace Y'all