Republicans Arise!

Charlie Cook analyzes the state of the Republican Party. It's not pretty. My view is that they need to get together and put on a strong offense. Bush's policies are not as bad as the polls make them appear. Poor public support is the result of a failure of Republicans to participate in the debate. The continuing drumbeat in the news media of failure, failure, failure needs to be taken straight on and defeated and members of the Congress are much better situated to do that than anybody in the White House is. Local media tend to be more open to counter arguments than their national brethren. They need somebody from the party to take them in hand and get them on the same page and motivate them to fight back.

The Katrina debacle was not the fault of the President. There were plenty of faults to go around, but the last time I looked we are primarily served by local and state governments, who can request assistance from FEMA. If you have incompetent and corrupt city and state government officials, FEMA can't undo decades of failure to prepare for disasters that are certain to occur. If you live below sea level, you can't assume that you'll never be flooded. If it were me, I might build my own levees or get with others to prepare. If the locals would organize and contribute labor, they could probably get help with materials from the government.

The war in Iraq is not a failure and they need to get some spine and stand up for it. How hard is it for a politician to preach patriotism? Have they become so fainthearted as to quail before the likes of Michael Moore and Barbra Streisand? They're elected to lead, so they need to get going and get the real truth out. Running away from Bush will only assure that their fears come true.