Get ready for the invasion of Republican circuit riders

A million years ago, maybe a little longer, Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett (then in his earlier  term) and Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff  insisted to me that their party would expand its base to include you-know-whos. It would be a magisterial commitment by two GOP draft horses to make the party whole for generations to come.

Didn't happen quite that way.  Not even close.  So after its  Comeback Team Romney/Ryan debacle in November -  a presidential election that even Karl Rove and Peggy Noonan decided was in their party's victory column for the asking -  the Republican brass are at it again.  They will spend $10 million, it says here, to send an army of circuit riders into the boonies to preach  the party's brand.  Suddenly minorities have become the party's search for the Holy Grail.

If there is a true opposite to Knute Rockne's famous half-time dressing room oration to his wilting team before sending it back onto the field, Reince Priebus,  the less-than-inspiring  national Republican Party chairman will have to do. He says the voter roundup  will  include "hundreds of people - paid - across the country, from coast to coast, in Hispanic, African-American, Asian communities, talking about our party, talking about our brand,  talking about what we believe in---"

Hold it right there, fella!  Ohioans already know what the party believes in. Let me remind you:

Begin with the belabored effort to limit the voter turnout last November. None other than John Boehner, the funereal Speaker,  told a luncheon group  hosted by the Christian Science Monitor last August: "This election is about economics...These groups [minority and poor voters] have been hit the hardest.  They may not show up and vote for our candidate but I'd suggest to  you they won't show up and vote for the president either."

Oh?
Now the Ohio Republican pols want to cut back the time to gather signatures  for  referendums, a bill that Kasich signed a few days ago. It impedes any effort to challenge a law.

From Planned Parenthood, to abortion, to same-sex marriage (Sen. Portman gets an ad hoc  pass on this one), to gun control,  the governor and the Republican controlled legislature keep doing awful things that are running in the opposite direction of the public mood.

And I haven't even mentioned Republicans' failed attack on unions in SB5, which was mauled at the polls.

Come to think of it, when Priebus talks of a $10 million outlay to  woo new voters with the Republican brand, he does sound like  a cheapskate. It won't be that easy. Tea Partyers are talking about starting their own party in Ohio.  Nobody except the governor and his A-Team seems happy about his proposed tax plan.

 Politically, the Buckeye State for national Republicans has become Brand X. The only question now:  What has taken them so long to figure that out - if indeed they have?  

Is the silent majority really alive and well?

  Republican operative Mark Weaver, Mitt Romney's lawyer in Ohio, joined the few wagon-circlers that formed in the debris of the candidate's attack on President Obama over the violence in Libya and Egypt with a spin that I haven't  heard in political talk for years.   At an Akron Press Club luncheon, he said Mitt was merely saying what the "silent majority believes."

There it is. Silent majority - the term that fell from Richard Nixon's lips back in the darkest of ages.

After the session,  I asked Weaver to clarify his  response to Romney's widely criticized intrusion into foreign policy at the height of an international  crises.

I should have known better. He shrugged off the critics as representing the "liberal media" That's a dog-eared-term kept alive by the Mark Weavers of the world when no other useful explanation serves their side.

So I mention, um, Peggy Noonan , the Wall Street Journal columnist and  once the speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who accused Romney of "not doing himself any  favors" with his bluster.

He dismissed her, too.  "Peggy Noonan is part of the Republican establishment," he sniffed.

Sorry, Mark.  We miss so  much living way out here in ihe Akron area.



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Lost weekenders

PEGGY NOONAN,  author and conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal,  has this  defense mechanism to ease her idol George Bush through history.  Bush, she writes, protected America against terrorists.  Eh, sorry, Peggy.  I think you missed one....

WITH soaring unemployment, public debt,  and ugly international conflicts,  President-elect Obama may have to crash through a number of   brick walls to turn the country around.  His situation  reminds me of something that President Kennedy said when he described  his biggest surprise after he entered the Oval Office:   "When we got into office the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were."  

HEY, TAKE a breath!    A little more than a month since the presidential election, the pollsters are working overtime to give us a glimpse of where the next campaign will take us.  CNN says its poll of Republicans and Independents show Mike Huckabee leading the GOP  field with 34 pct. followed by Sarah Palin at 32 pct.  Since this is all gross  nonsense at this point, it would be interesting to see where these two "frontrunners" would wind up in the next poll if Warren Harding were added to the list. 

HOLIDAY SHOPPING, 2008.   I came across a plastic medalli0n that read "American Hero, U.S. Air Force."...Yep.  Made in China.  

BROWN(ie)S POINTS: The Sunday Plain Dealer excessively devoted most of its front page and acres of space inside the paper to the question: "What's Wrong with the Browns?" Obviously it was an attempt to lighten up the reader with some bright hometown news amid the really serious stuff eating at all of us these days.  I don't claim to be a deep thinker about that team by the lake, which qualifies  me as much as anybody else to analyze the Browns' annual sickly status.  It's called the Modell Curse.  Trust me.  Since Art moved the franchise from Cleveland, his Baltimore Ravens have won one Super Bowl, which  puts him one-up over the Browns.  By the way, the Browns lost against today.