Posted by
flagwaver on Monday, October 09, 2006 11:27:37 AM
The GOP needs a big, fat attitude adjustment! This party has the biggest losers mentality since the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the early 1980's...they rarely won, and when they did they didn't know what to do. That is what I continually see with the GOP when it gets power.
The party and its 'leaders', and I use that term lightly, seemingly have no idea how to be winners. The GOP took back the House in 1994 and have held the Presidency for 20 of the last 28 years, and they still act like losers. They allow the minority party to set the political agenda, to paint all events in the worst light for the GOP, and run screaming from any type of political confrontation. Just look back and you will see that the GOP seems to lack the intestinal fortitude to do anything that really matters.
There is no real leadership in the Congress, the President seems more interested in making nice with the Democrats than in letting them know that they are the minority party, and the conservative pundits wallow in defeatism.
Think I'm wrong? Just stroll through the archives of the 'Hall and you will see what I am talking about. How many times have the writers here told us that the GOP is going to lose the House in November? How many say that the GOP deserves to lose the midterm elections? And think about this, most of those articles were written before the current Mark Foley "scandalette", to steal an Ann Coulter-ism!
The pundits seem to be attempting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you continually tell the voters of the party that the party deserves to lose, that in fact they will lose, it makes it that much more likely that a loss will occur. Just listen to the conservatives that tell us that the Foley matter is going to doom the GOP, that immigration will doom the GOP, that spending will...you get the point!
There needs to be a sea change in the GOP attitudes that takes them from the belief that they have to be nice to the Dems, in the case that the Dems regain power, to an attitude that the party has a mandate to govern. There needs to be an attitude that the voters have given the party a majority and thus have empowered them to govern in a conservative manner. There has to be a realization that winning is just that...WINNING! You know, "To the victors go the spoils" is as true now as the day it was first spoken.
The GOP has to break the minority mindset it adopted during its long exile from the reigns of government and begin acting like the majority party. And its most visible members, outside of government officials, have to stop speaking defeat to the base. Stop spending so much time telling us what the worst case scenario could be, and start telling us what we can do to strengthen our hold on the majority. Every once in a while hit us off like Rufus and Chaka Khan..."Tell me something good!"
Because if the Tampa Bay Yuccaneers can one day learn to win and become World Champions, it shouldn't be too hard for the GOP to learn to act like winners after they have won.
All it takes is a little attitude adjustment!