One thing we know about Republicans is that they're very good making a big fuss about something in order to keep us from examining what they're really doing. Take Darrel Issa, the rich-as-Croesus, endlessly energetic California House member who's promising half a dozen subpoenas directed at Democrats even before all the votes have been counted. Take Mitch McConnell who's making headlines with his promise to take Obama down in 2010. Both are unapologetic members of corporations' privately contracted army.
All of this is intended to keep us riveted, our attention distracted from the main event: doing what it takes to retake the White House and both houses of Congress. The goal is so important that fiddly stuff like backstopping elements of the health care bill are just part of the puppet show. While most of us are busy here in the weeds, or celebrating or mourning, Republicans are focused on winning it all in 2012.
After all, they were already focused on taking back the White House in January of 2009. Even as Barack and Michelle Obama were walking up Constitution Avenue and waving at massive crowds, the Republicans were elsewhere working out their future.
The PowerPoint slides presented to House Republicans in January 2009 seemed incongruously optimistic at a time when the very word “hope” belonged to the newly ascendant Democrats and their incoming president, Barack Obama.
“If the goal of the majority is to govern, what is the purpose of the minority?” one slide asked.
“The purpose of the minority,” came the answer, “is to become the majority.”
They were figuring out what they'd need to pull this off even before Obama sat down for the first time in his Oval Office chair. How they were going to do it, according to a report in today's New York Times "is the story of one of the most remarkable Congressional campaigns in more than a half-century, characterized by careful plotting by Republicans, miscalculations by Democrats and a new political dynamic with forces out of both parties control."
The unpredictable Tea Party movement, the torrent of corporate money from outside interests and an electorate with deep discontent helped shift the balance of power in Washington.
Back when Bush was just settling into his second term, I remember having a mini-discussion in a blog with Dave Sirota about whether what we both recognized was a growing populist movement could become a progressive populist movement and one that was part of the Democratic party, or whether the natural tendency was for populism to continue its rightward drift. Sirota was hopeful but skeptical; I was full of having watched a nascent populist movement take shape, a movement that included both left and right -- and could easily imagine it becoming part of an all-out progressive effort within the Democratic party.
Which is to say that what later became the tea party movement were already around in 2005-6 and probably well before. I've mentioned more than once that here, in Texas, in the aftermath of Obama's election, a group which was to become coopted by Dick Armey and crew was already planning a larger populist campaign against Washington and corporate control of government. The newly-elected President Obama's birth certificate, racial epithets, health care legislation, shrieks about socialism -- none of these were part of the mix yet. There was still plenty of room for progressives who shared populist disgust with the deeply corruptBush administration, the Patriot Act, Blackwater, banks and then anger at Bush and Obama administrations' bail-out of Wall Street and the general "elitist" direction our government had taken. The targets of this growing movement were still the poisonous corporate elements within both parties.
Then the little group of populist hopefuls were Foxed and bought out, lost their progressive support, turned hard right, older, and white, and added Jesus and moral self-righteousness to their corporate board. The Democrats lost (once again! of course! ) the opportunity to understand and incorporate the "cats" whose energies they find so difficult to incorporate into the party, much less herd.
Republicans, on the other hand, have no problem envisioning the cohesion of their herd. The Times walks us through the political moves they made to guarantee a quick recovery from the 2009 loss.
They... tried to push Democrats into retirement, using what was described in the presentation as “guerilla tactics” like chasing Democratic members down with video cameras and pressing them to explain votes or positions. (One target, Representative Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, had to apologize for manhandling one of his inquisitors in a clip memorialized on YouTube. Only this week did Republican strategists acknowledge they were behind the episode.)
Improbably, Mr. Boehner’s team turned the notion that Republicans could not afford to be the “Party of No” — or, in his words, the party of “Hell no” — on its ear, successfully portraying it as a virtue in the face of Mr. Obama’s legislative priorities.
From then on, it became a matter of party money-raisers (Rove, American Crossroads) and allies (US Chamber and dirty tricks).
Bill Miller, the national political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, recalled how his team ran an advertisement against Representative Joe Sestak, running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, claiming that he voted with Ms. Pelosi 100 percent of the time — knowing it might be a slight exaggeration.
He said his team was thrilled when Mr. Sestak raised a public objection, arguing that, in fact, he voted with Ms. Pelosi 97 percent of the time. In a climate where Ms. Pelosi was toxic, “I was like, ‘Jackpot,’ ” Mr. Miller said. (Mr. Sestak lost in a close race.)
The Democrats panicked and, in too many cases, went under.
Obama "feels bad."
Republicans, energized and aware that they've succeeded in turning President Obama into Mr. Washington DC/Wall Street, have already started. November 2 was, as everyone says, the first day of the 2012 campaign.
The Democratic party is not exactly the cavalry that's going to charge in and save the left. It will hunker down in the weeds, unable to see or cope with a bulked-up army ready to make sure Washington DC remains well inside the high fence of corporate control. Democrats are easy to distract.
