"I think we’re in one of those times right now where people feel like things as they are going aren’t working, that we’re bogged down in the same arguments we’ve been having, and they’re not useful. The Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I mean, I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there for the last 10-15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they’re being debated among the [GOP] presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts. You know, we’ve done that. We’ve tried it. That’s not really going to solve our energy problems, for example." At RGJ.com
In other words, we’ve been there done that; it doesn’t work. Nevertheless, is anybody going to seriously deny that since 1980 the GOP has taken the initiative and forced the Dems into a consistently reactive/defensive posture? It’s obviously and pathetically true. The Dems have been the clueless party of mediocrity and complacency and were completely blindsided by the conservative backlash, and they were ineffectual in their response to it. The most successful politician they could muster during this period was the Republican-lite Bill Clinton. And now that same pathetic Democratic establishment wants more of that same pathetic, tired act.
Isn’t the obvious point Obama makes that in the same way the country reversed direction in 1980–and it did, it most certainly did–it is ready now to reverse direction again, this time in a forward gear rather than in reverse. The Bush presidency is not the betrayal of the Reagan legacy, but its efflorescence and the apotheosis of its simplemindedness, moral bankruptcy, and fundamental emptiness. And in that sense, let us all fervently hope, it has played out.
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