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Here's a little epistolary advice for the GOP, c/o the House Republicans, attn: Eric Cantor: Stop trying.
Just stop. At least for a few months. Go home or back to the office, kick up your feet and forget the whole scene. Pour a few drinks. Say a few prayers. Get into group therapy. Maybe ... maybe even read a book -- you know, go radical. Anything but these endless public displays of cluelessness. Because when you're in a hole ...
The Web site was, I gather, meant to be up and running in tandem with the Politico's lead story yesterday: "GOP scrambles to show it has ideas" -- the editorially chosen verb an appropriate one, since the GOP-ballyhooed site was nowhere to be found. Although more than once it referenced the site as a going concern, the Politico -- suspecting unremedied incompetence, I guess -- graciously provided no link; nor did several online searches of various word-combinations produce a relevant result.
I swear, today's GOP makes the disheveled left of the 1980s look like a gaggle of efficiency experts.
Anyway, by this early morning -- poof -- there it was, unscrambled, although frankly its existential absence was immeasurably more interesting.
Working deductively, here's what the Politico reported: "The mission appears to be as much about repackaging long-standing principles as it is about offering brand-new ideas for each debate. [The site] often restates proposals Republicans offered as their alternatives to the president’s plans. In the jobs section, for instance, Cantor reiterates the party’s commitment to offer small businesses a tax deduction and to reduce the tax rates on the lowest income brackets."
(There is a "Learn More" link helpfully provided on the "Jobs Plan" page, and, wishing indeed to learn more about the GOP's latest tax-reducing benevolence toward the oppressed affluent -- sadly unmentioned on the main "Jobs" page -- I clicked on it. This yielded only a staring match. Frank Luntz must still be working on the doubleplusgood wording.)
So, a tax deduction and a tax reduction -- the House GOP's twin answers to its self-posed question: "How will I keep my job?"
Well, moving on, what about, "How will I grow my savings?" First, House Republicans want you to know -- and I sure didn't know this -- that "current law limits the amount Americans can put into their retirement savings." (Alert to Bill Gates' accountant.) Second, they're offering -- you got it -- a savings tax credit, which presumably you'll take advantage of when you manage to keep your job only through a tax deduction/reduction.
"How should we use taxpayer money?" asks the GOP on a separate page. Naturally, in the dire depths of a repression we should choke the one spending outlet we have -- government -- but equally important is that the GOP -- ready? here it comes -- would "permanently [extend] the 2001/2003 tax relief provisions."
OK, so now you're keeping your job and you're growing your savings and you're taming the dastardly Leviathan, all through the miraculous blessings of tax relief, but, I hear you cry, "How will I keep my house?" Right. Need I even bother? "Republicans propose a ... tax credit."
Regrettably, the one Q&A missing from Eric Cantor's Solutions Center is, "How will we ever maintain a two-party system to better confront this economic calamity when our party is so unspeakably lame?"
A principal reason for Cantor's cyber-gibberish is, as the Politico reports, because "GOP leaders ... want to insulate themselves from the 'party of no' label." Which, of course, is easily achievable through the simple cessation of always saying "no."
Another reason, they say, is that they really do have ideas and alternatives, but those ideas and alternatives are going unheard. Hence scrambling Web sites and gimmicky "Solutions Centers" and electronic interactivities on the symbolic fritz. What they cannot seem to digest, however, is that, while ghostly, their solutions are far from unknown. We're perfectly aware of their economic formulas from the Age of George V; it's just that those formulas are forever as dead as he.
Just stop. At least for a few months. Go home or back to the office, kick up your feet and forget the whole scene. Pour a few drinks. Say a few prayers. Get into group therapy. Maybe ... maybe even read a book -- you know, go radical. Anything but these endless public displays of cluelessness. Because when you're in a hole ...
Yet House Republicans dug themselves yet deeper yesterday, or perhaps it was sometime late last night or during the wee hours of this morning. I don't know the precise moment of Creation, nevertheless the fruit of their labor is now viewable: the "Economic Solutions Center: Brought to you by the House Republicans." No kidding.
The Web site was, I gather, meant to be up and running in tandem with the Politico's lead story yesterday: "GOP scrambles to show it has ideas" -- the editorially chosen verb an appropriate one, since the GOP-ballyhooed site was nowhere to be found. Although more than once it referenced the site as a going concern, the Politico -- suspecting unremedied incompetence, I guess -- graciously provided no link; nor did several online searches of various word-combinations produce a relevant result.
I swear, today's GOP makes the disheveled left of the 1980s look like a gaggle of efficiency experts.
Anyway, by this early morning -- poof -- there it was, unscrambled, although frankly its existential absence was immeasurably more interesting.
Working deductively, here's what the Politico reported: "The mission appears to be as much about repackaging long-standing principles as it is about offering brand-new ideas for each debate. [The site] often restates proposals Republicans offered as their alternatives to the president’s plans. In the jobs section, for instance, Cantor reiterates the party’s commitment to offer small businesses a tax deduction and to reduce the tax rates on the lowest income brackets."
(There is a "Learn More" link helpfully provided on the "Jobs Plan" page, and, wishing indeed to learn more about the GOP's latest tax-reducing benevolence toward the oppressed affluent -- sadly unmentioned on the main "Jobs" page -- I clicked on it. This yielded only a staring match. Frank Luntz must still be working on the doubleplusgood wording.)
So, a tax deduction and a tax reduction -- the House GOP's twin answers to its self-posed question: "How will I keep my job?"
Well, moving on, what about, "How will I grow my savings?" First, House Republicans want you to know -- and I sure didn't know this -- that "current law limits the amount Americans can put into their retirement savings." (Alert to Bill Gates' accountant.) Second, they're offering -- you got it -- a savings tax credit, which presumably you'll take advantage of when you manage to keep your job only through a tax deduction/reduction.
"How should we use taxpayer money?" asks the GOP on a separate page. Naturally, in the dire depths of a repression we should choke the one spending outlet we have -- government -- but equally important is that the GOP -- ready? here it comes -- would "permanently [extend] the 2001/2003 tax relief provisions."
OK, so now you're keeping your job and you're growing your savings and you're taming the dastardly Leviathan, all through the miraculous blessings of tax relief, but, I hear you cry, "How will I keep my house?" Right. Need I even bother? "Republicans propose a ... tax credit."
And that, gentle reader, is a comprehensive survey of every possible House GOP solution to every possible problem at every possible turn: tax relief, tax credits, tax deductions, tax reductions, less taxes, fewer taxes, smaller taxes, shorter taxes, not so many taxes. I sense a theme here.
Regrettably, the one Q&A missing from Eric Cantor's Solutions Center is, "How will we ever maintain a two-party system to better confront this economic calamity when our party is so unspeakably lame?"
A principal reason for Cantor's cyber-gibberish is, as the Politico reports, because "GOP leaders ... want to insulate themselves from the 'party of no' label." Which, of course, is easily achievable through the simple cessation of always saying "no."
Another reason, they say, is that they really do have ideas and alternatives, but those ideas and alternatives are going unheard. Hence scrambling Web sites and gimmicky "Solutions Centers" and electronic interactivities on the symbolic fritz. What they cannot seem to digest, however, is that, while ghostly, their solutions are far from unknown. We're perfectly aware of their economic formulas from the Age of George V; it's just that those formulas are forever as dead as he.
Until the GOP goes home in hibernation and rethinks all the fundamentals of its raison d'être, it'll twist in the wind and bleach its bones and ultimately scatter to the ages. For now, it is simply, comically useless.
(Until then, the Dems will just have to keep the Goopers afloat, eh?)
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Let The Sun Shine In......
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