The usual snarky rules don’t apply. If Alec Baldwin can face the facts because he must face the facts then anyone can.
The public is in a “pox on both Houses” mood.
They know that for every Democrat that helped foster ruin, there was a Republican complicit.
Republicans, facing up to that truth as admirably as Alec Baldwin did on his side, have to acknowledge not just the failure of Bushism, but the discrediting and obsolescence of Reaganism.
You know, the ideology Bush I properly called “voodoo economics”. That said that all taxes can be cut to nothing because they eventually “pay for themselves”, so “deficits don’t matter!”.
That wealth concentrating almost solely to the rich is not a problem because it “trickles down”.
The Dick Armey/Norquist/Phil Gramm crusade to deregulate the financial markets and remove government oversight so “the genius of the free market!!” can deliver it’s bounty to all thanks to the wise, liberated noble titans of Wall Street.
And how Republicans chimed in with Democrats that 800 billion trade deficits and the gutting of industry and skilled industrial jobs “didn’t matter” because a post-industrial America would prosper by 30,000 fatcats selling “ingenious financial instruments. And providing the world with American wizardry in banking solutions. We were also supposed to excel at “providing exciting green energy solutions” and compensate from China making most the stuff by “unsurpassed American creativity” which appears to be limited to manuals telling Americans how to use Chinese DVRs, Japanese Priuses, and German optics..
If Alec Baldwin admits the past dogma from both Parties has let America down, it is time Republicans do so, as well.
Palin is a small sideshow. McCain will likely lose because he is so long tied to the Reaganites who, like the Neocons, have had their time pass. Obama isn’t any better, he is on paper worse than McCain, but is unburdened with all McCains 30-year long “Dear Friendships” with DC powerbrokers and has no enthusiasm for the endless war and military worship that McCain has..
After the failure of Reagan economic ideas is too obvious to ignore, after the failed Presidency of Dubya, after the 1994 Republican Revolution was betrayed into corruption and corporate cronyism and general incompetence at running Gov’t – it’s a good time as any for the Republicans to “bench themselves” and figure out how to remake themselves as a 21st Century Party again attractive to the middle, working classes, and women…
The Democrats will have 4 years to show if they can clean up the mess of their fellow Democrats and the hapless terrorism-fixated Bush and the Republicans for the Rich. If they succeed, great. If they don’t and Republicans are improved and not still a pack of reactionary, bought & paid for dinosaurs from the 70s and early 80s – then they may get another chance.
If neither are fit to lead we may end up with a State of Emergency and an authoritarian gov’t that has to get debt and entitlements back under control, our Borders and trade back under control, and America comptetive again.
