Blog For Arizona

The GOP 2004 meme

One meme the GOP hopes will carry them through the '04 cycle with their hides intact is becoming apparent. An RNC statement attacking the Democratic presidential MSNBC debate was headlined "Democrats So Desperate to Attack President Bush, They Will Say Just About Anything!"

Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the RNC said, "They're all Howard Dean now. They have adopted harsh, bitter, personal attacks as their approach. They are a party of protest and pessimism and offer no positive agenda of their own."

So this is at least the first meme the GOP will put in the water supply to try to convince America that GOP is a party which can govern and deserves four more years. Bitterly attacking the Dems with no policy basis, claiming that the Dems are just bitterly attacking them with no policy basis. Kinda funny, really.

We are the Party of Protest. Yes. Against tax cuts for the wealthy, endless budget deficits, reckless and ruinously expensive military adventurism, and the murder of 359 U.S. service men, 1500 Iraqi civilians and 3 million American jobs, by this Administration and this GOP controlled Congress.


We are the Party of Pessimism. Yes. Pessimism about the GOP's fitness to govern this country. Pessimism that anything will improve with the GOP at the wheel. They've had their chance to show what they can do, and the result has been an disaster of interstate pile-up proportions. The GOP needs to be put in the backseat where it can't do any more harm. We'll even provide them with a distracting illusion of control.


We offer no Positive Agenda. Except health care for all Americans, restoration of American credibility in the world, equitable taxes, balanced budgets, educated and healthy children, new American jobs, robust and beneficial enviromental protection, an alternative fuels policy to wean us off petroleum dependence, a sane anti-terrorism policy, the protection of the civil rights of all people. They must mean besides that.

We offer harsh, bitter, personal attacks. How dare we attack the usurper, an illegitimate and unelected President who stole the election with illegal military ballots, an illegal and racist voter role purge, violent protests, threats of insurrection, personal intimidation, and the aid of a suborned and corrupt Supreme Court. How dare we be bitter about Bush, who lied to drag a psychologically wounded nation into an unnecessary war which has claimed 359 American lives and counting, mired us in a quagmire of Vietnam proportions, will cost us hundreds of billions we cannot afford, and destroyed untold thousands of Iraqi lives. How dare we speak harshly of an Administration, a Congress, and a GOP filled with racists, bigots, fascists, criminals, third-rate intellects, and Christo-Talibani who want to foist their revolution upon America, destroy our civil rights, damage our enviroment, drive the poor further into poverty, trash democracy, tax the rich less than the poor, force women into subjugation, force minorities into second-class citizenship, and over-turn our Constitutional order of the rule of law in favor of their own rule by men and call into question our patriotism for opposing it. I'd say such behavior warrants some personal attacks. What these people have done to our nation deserves retribution and the exaction of justice. Do I take the attempted destruction of my nation personally? You bet your ass I do.

Their meme may slap on a tournequette and quickening exsanguination from their base, but this Administration is too gravely wounded to recover. Even most of the rank and file will find this meme insulting to their intelligence. The GOP are squirming desperately for any traction they can find. The overwhelming majority of America simply doesn't believe them anymore. Once you have lost credibility with Americans that's game, set, and match. You don't recover politically once you have lost the trust of the majority of Americans. Bush could reveal himself to be the second coming of Christ now and most would dismiss it as a trasparent play for the religous vote.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 9/30/2003 10:01:00 AM