WC Helps the GOP Out: Admitting the GOP’s Real Problem

WC will selflessly offer serious, substantive advice to the Republic Party. Why? Because it’s just too painful to watch. The poor thing needs help, if only to avoid having the Republican-led U.S. House drag the country into another recession.

Everyone who has read a self-help book knows the process. The first step to problem-solving is to identify the problem. The second step is to address the problem in a mature, competent way. And the third step is to take action to prevent the problem from recurring.

Step 1 – Identifying the Problem.

Recognizing the Problem

When was the last time you heard the Republicans mention the previous president? Acting as if there was no George W. Bush administration is a kind of bizarre denial. It’s pretty obvious why the GOP pretends Bush/Cheney didn’t happen. Here’s a partial list.

• The worst national security lapse since Pearl Harbor (9/11) despite being warned explicitly in advance.
• Two unfunded land wars in Asia.
• In the case of the invasion of Iraq, either a war based on an intentional lie or the most staggering intelligence failure in American history
• A huge cut in the U.S. income tax at the time of those two unfunded, multi-billion dollar wars
• An unfunded new Medicare prescription medicine mandate
• Deregulation of the housing finance industry, leading to the worst economic disaster since 1929.
• Unilateral abandonment of U.S. compliance with the Geneva Accords, government-sponsored torture and a host of war crimes.

Remember, WC said this was just a partial list. But, yeah, there was this very lengthy and very embarrassing series of utter failures by a guy who was a Republican. But the problem isn’t that a Republican president committed this horrifying series of blunders.

The problem is that the Republican Party won’t come to grips with that reality. The Republican Party pretends the 8-year Bush Administration didn’t happen. It’s an astonishing kind of group denial. If it happened in an individual that person might be diagnosed as neurotic.

Step 2 – Dealing with the Problem.

The Republican Party refuses to admit the problem exists, let alone that it is a problem or that the Party needs to deal with the horrifying mistakes of its former titular head. So you get embarrassing spectacles like Senator John McCain (R, AZ) accusing Charles Hagel, nominee for Secretary of Defense, when he says the Iraq War arose from faulty intelligence. Instead of attempting to defend the decision to go to war in Iraq, McCain accused Hagel of attacking the soldiers who had fought and died there. Because, you see, it wasn’t a Republican president who made the decision to send soldiers there. That guy doesn’t exist.

And you have the GOP challenging reform of financial regulation because it will “hurt the country competitively,” because the Great Recession wasn’t triggered by the failure to adequately regulate the financial sector. Because, you know, there was no failure to adequately regulate the financial sector because Bush-Cheney didn’t happen. The Great Recession is the fault of President Obama, or a Democratic Congress, because Bush-Cheney didn’t exist.

The over-stated, over-hyped “debt crisis,” the very tired horse the GOP has long since ridden into the ground, into shambling zombie-hood, is entirely the fault of President Obama because, you know, Bush-Cheney never happened.

It’s all a weird kind of denial. Andrew Sullivan has his proposed cure:

Someone in the GOP needs to take Bush-Cheney apart, to show how they created the debt crisis we are in, by throwing away a surplus on unaffordable tax cuts, launching two unfunded wars, and one new unfunded entitlement. They need to take on the war crimes that has deeply undermined the soul of the United States. They need to note the catastrophic negligence that gave us the worst national security lapse since Pearl Harbor (9/11) despite being warned explicitly in advance, accept weak and false intelligence to launch a war they were too incompetent to fight or win, sat back as one of the worst hurricanes all but took out a major city, and was so negligent in bank regulation that we ended up with Lehman and all that subsequently took place.

These were not minor errors. They were catastrophic misjudgments which took an era of peace, surplus and prosperity and replaced it with a dystopia of massive debt, a lawless executive branch, two unwinnable wars, and a record of war crimes that had their source in the very Oval Office.

When will the Republicans hold themselves accountable for the things that have persuaded so many that this bunch of fanatics and deniers are unfit for government? When will they speak of Bush and Cheney and repudiate them?

WC thinks Sullivan’s treatment will happen the same day the Senator Imhofe introduces a carbon tax, which will be the same day Rep. Broun proposes a national holiday for Charles Darwin.

Some Republican needs to work up the courage to say, “Our party made grievous mistakes. We’ve moved beyond them. We’ve learned from them. Here’s how.” A group of Republicans needs to hold Congressional hearings on, at a minimum, how we got into the war in Iraq and the treatment of “detainees” by the United States. That should include the torture, the “extraordinary rendition” – outsourcing our torture – and the murder of prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Under Bush-Cheney, the U.S. abandoned not just Republican values of conservatism and constitutionalism; it abandoned American ideals. The Republican Party has some soul-searching to do if it wants to reclaim those values and ideals.

Step 3: Preventing a Recurrence.

It’s easy to prevent a recurrence: don’t elect arrogant Republicans who think their immediate goals are more important than the Constitution. But WC is here to help the Republicans, at least this once, so let’s recast the solution this way: Republicans should ask themselves, and answer honestly: “Why am I doing this?” If the answer is to benefit anyone other than the country as a whole, they shouldn’t do it. If it’s for a lobbyist, a big campaign contributor, or their own kid, they shouldn’t do it. If it is for some platform item that reflects a special interest, they shouldn’t do it. If it benefits any of those folks, even incidentally, they should ask themselves if the benefit to the country as a whole is great enough to engage in self-dealing. And generally answer “No.”

Note this test works for Democrats, liberals, conservatives, progressives and Randites, too. It doesn’t work for Teabaggers, because they seem to be incapable of logical thinking.

Because when our elected officials take the oath of office, they swear to defend the Constitution, not their constituents. They swear to uphold the United Stats, not line the pockets of their family, friends and campaign contributors.

WC will now relax in the happy glow of service, utterly confident his advice will be totally ignored.