If you’ll indulge us for a moment, we’re going to run with a tortured metaphor. Today’s Republican party is like Pete Rose — if Pete Rose had bet against his own club.
Imagine for a second that you’re on a team (say, America, or for the sake of the metaphor, the Cincinnati Reds); you have a natural and undeniable interest in seeing said team do well. Now imagine that you’ve bet against your team — bet a lot against your team. You’ve bet everything you’ve got on the Padres, or maybe you’ve doubled down on everything Barack Obama does failing.
That’s where the Republicans are today. We’ve had fat sack of goo Rush Limbaugh say he “hope[s] Obama fails,” and we’ve had Tom DeLay echo the sentiment. Sure, you could assume they meant with regard to certain policies they opposed — a totally fair expression — but today has revealed a far different reaction to bad news in this country.
What we’re seeing is Republicans uncontrollably giddy about tough times. Take it away, Politico:
Remember when Republicans accused Democrats of rooting against America?
Judging from the volume of exultant Tweets and press releases from Republicans today — you’d think they’d won a doubleheader, what with Chicago losing the Olympics and the unemployment numbers rising unexpectedly.
Within the first 45 minutes after the Labor Department announced a worse than expected Sept. jobless numbers, I received no fewer than eight GOP press releases blasting away at President Obama for failing to stem the tide of unemployment.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) literally hit the send button at 8:30 a.m., the moment the announcement of the 263,000 losses were announced: “As unemployment continues to climb, we are reminded yet again that wasteful government spending is not the solutions to what ails this economy.”
“The President repeatedly claimed that he would ‘create or save jobs.’ It is clear that his reckless spending and big government policies have failed,” Rep. John Culberson said.
Actually, it’s not really clear that Obama’s policies have failed because nine months is nowhere near enough time to judge the effects of economic policy, especially on a global or national scale. That said, with a bit of distance between today and the George W. Bush years, it is safe to judge whether his policies worked. Not surprisingly, they didn’t:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country’s condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton’s two terms, often substantially.
The Census’ final report card on Bush’s record presents an intriguing backdrop to today’s economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama’s combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush’s two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.
As if it weren’t ridiculous enough that the GOP is piling on over the economy — after fostering eight years of negative economic growth — they were also giddy today because the United States lost its Olympic bid. That’s right, they thought it was hilarious! And great! Back to Politico:
Seconds after the stunning announcement that Chicago had been eliminated from Olympic contention, GOP luminaries were Twittering away with glee, celebrating the USA’s humiliating international loss, which, of course, embarrassed Obama, who made the trip to Copenhagen.
Newt Gingrich rolled all the bad-good news into a single Tweet, throwing Iran in for good measure: “President Obama fails to get the Olympics while unemployment goes to 9.8% Iran continues nuclear program. America needs focused leadership.”
GOP operative Matt Machowiak was giddy, ” Actually Obama got the flowers, not even the bronze”
RedState’s Erick Erickson, actually laughed [in print]:
“Hahahahaha. I thought the world would love us more now that Bush was gone. I thought if we whored ourselves out to our enemies, great things would happen. Apparently not. So Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world, made promises to half the Olympic committee, and they did not even kiss him. So much for improving America’s standing in the world, Barry O.”
Think that’s isolated? Well then head over to the National Review, and see if you still think so.
The giddiness is actually amazing right now. We can’t quite figure out why a bunch of people losing their jobs and not getting the Olympics is so exciting for the GOP, but then again, this is a party whose members seem poised to place Sarah Palin atop their 2012 ticket.
