E.J. Dionne reminds me of all those fin-du-siecle losers back in the late ’70s and early ’80s who still touted the supremacy of their 8-track tapes long after the industry had moved on to the smaller, more convenient cassette. Demodé E.J. doesn’t realize the Republican Party has undergone a techno-ideological renaissance and that the antiquated political world he longs to revive–if it in fact ever really existed–is obsolete.
Here’s one of E.J.’s hoary 8-track conclusions:
After two decades in which moderates fled a party increasingly dominated by its right wing, the Republican primary electorate has been reduced to nothing but its right wing. O’Donnell, boosted by a last minute anti-Castle spending spree from the California-based Tea Party Express, pulled off her revolution with a little over 30,000 votes. That’s all it took to seize control of a once Grand Old Party in which the center no longer has the troops.
Dionne, starry-eyed piner after days gone by, has it all backwards. O’Donnell didn’t seize the G.O.P. — the G.O.P. seized upon O’Donnell, and on her dedication to party principles. Unlike Castle, she’s no spelunker; she doesn’t cave. The Republican party is experiencing a widespread Reaganesque rebirth and the old parameters no longer apply.
The brave among you can read here the wistful WaPo whiner’s full screed condemning the Republican Party’s finally finding some testicular fortitude in Delaware. Ironically, said fortitude comes courtesy of the anatomically-unequipped Christine O’Donnell rather than her more biologically-suited opponent Mike Castle.
Predictably, throughout his rant, Eight-Track E.J. implies that the Democratic Party has been the model of bipartisanship. No mention of the utter inflexibility of the Democrats when it came to planning the Health Care Reform Bill. No mention of how the Republicans were not only not invited to participate in the discussion but were literally locked out of the room. Until, in an act of puerile political theater, Obama debuted the one-day, eight-hour, Health Care Summit Comedy Show, a new low in reality TV in which Republicans were invited to “discuss” ex post facto a preordained unstoppable law while Democrats pretended to listen seriously to Republican reform proposals. That’s the type of “bipartisanship” Dionne’s beloved Democrats display–a bipartisanship of style, not of substance. The carefree lover there for the short-term thrill, not the committed spouse slogging it out for better or for worse.
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“Eight-track” winds on:
The conventional Washington talking point holds that as Republicans have moved right, the Democrats have moved left. But this is patently false — just count the number of moderate Democratic House members. And one politician who sees no equivalence is Castle. The domination of a party by its most ideological wing, he said, “is a more extensive problem right now in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party.”
Sure, the Democratic House is moderate. Uh-huh. Anyone remember the Stupak Dozen? They were “moderate.” Until they caved last February–to a meaningless anti-abortion codicil with fewer teeth than a nonagenarian meth addict–and gave the Death Panel treatment to any last hope of stopping passage of Obamacare. Like any smart self-preservation-minded criminal, Stupak then promptly took it on the political lam, announcing his retirement from Congress. Brave Bart had stood up proudly for the right to life–until he folded like a cheap card table.
That’s your moderate Democrat in action.
Dionne, no stranger to smugness, then turns prognosticator:
Yes, the tea parties have just about handed Delaware’s Senate election to Democratic nominee Chris Coons, the young New Castle County executive who was transformed from an underdog to Castle on Tuesday morning to the overwhelming favorite against O’Donnell by late evening.
Of course, that sort of hubris also preceded the fall of Castle, the fall of Coakley, the fall of Specter, the fall of Corzine. Pride goeth before a fall, they say. Breezy Dionne and his fellow post-Castle chicken-counting Democrats may just awaken to a Reverend Wright “come home to roost” moment in Delaware November 2nd.
What Dionne fails to understand is that the conservative electorate is not living in the eight-track world he grew up in any more. It is bone-tired of compromising its principles, especially with a Democratic party whose definition of compromise is “Our way, or go away.” A party that has shoved bill after bill after bill down our throats for the last twenty-one months and yet still can muster the straight-faced audacity to blame the G.O.P. for blocking its agenda.
Dionne calls the Tea Party movement “a well-financed right wing that parades under a false populist banner.” A valiant effort on Dionne’s part, but denying the legitimacy of the Tea Party frankly is getting to be a lot like those old eight-track cassettes… very yesterday.
At any rate, at least now we know what E.J. stands for: Eight-track Junkie. Hey, I wonder if he might take some of my old Led Zeppelin tapes off my hands.
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