Jim Jordan, local GOP favorite with party near death

As the Republican Party slams its internecine combat into finding somebody silly enough to take the job that John Boehner is leaving behind,  among the leaders of the fringe's weapons of mass destruction is Rep. Jim Jordan,  the chairman of the  House Freedom Caucus.  We need not mention that any time you see "freedom" in  a group's  title, you can be sure that it is conveniently rooted in  some crazy interplanetary cult that  has taken over the Republican Party.

It's also an element of Jordan's political profile that he is from southwestern Ohio and had a leading hand in hounding Boehner,  his Ohio neighbor,  into impending retirement.

It wasn't that long ago  - March 28, to be precise - that Jordan was hailed as the featured speaker in a party invitation to the Summit County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner, an annual event celebrating identity theft.  Signed by Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff and his likely successor, Bryan  C. Williams, Jordan  was praised with breathless text.

It noted that Jordan, a former OSU wrestling coach who is said to live on a farm,  is "second to none"  as an outspoken watchdog and "a consistent and a straightforward  critic of the Obamacare trainwreck" as well as other things.  If you wanted to hear the rest of it from the party throne, it would have  cost you $50 a ticket to get into the room for dinner.The letter didn't mention that Jordan was also in the upper tier of those who preferred a government shutdown as a measure to overturn Obamacare.

Superlatives have never been Arshinkoff's weakest oratorical skill but it does seem odd that he would have chosen a hard right party-dissembler  to entertain  his people in a night out.  Even Ray Bliss would have been condemned by the Jordans now running the party.

So I'll let some counter-point slip in from David Brooks, a conservative columnist who is having none of Arshinkoff's version of what's shining so brightly in the upheaval.
Brooks writes that the "new Republican faction regards the messy  business of politics as soiled and impure.  Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are refarded as aliens.  Political identitity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal."

Or as Gene Lyons, National Memo columnist put it:  "The 'Freedom caucus' not only can't govern, they don't appear to believe in governance.  Hence the 58 futile show votes to repeal Obamacare, which accomplished absolutely nothing in real political terms."

GOP: A party in need of a party

ALTHOUGH THE national polls told us that President Obama's first address to the joint session of congress  was a grand slam, one needed only to look last night at the Republican faces on the cadaverous side of the aisle to see how those who now represent the  other 30 pct. were living these days. The party's leaders, Sen. Mitch  McConnell and Rep. John Boehner, were gloweringly  stone-faced. And Sen. McCain, who wants to be the GOP's pater familias,  offered us nothing more than a fleeting simpering smile.  On windy days, there is more action on the sculpted  faces of Mt. Rushmore.  

As Mike Maslansky, the CEO of a conservative research group, said:  "The Democrats loved almost everything Obama had to say.  The Republicans hated almost everything that Obama had to say." Sorry, guys and gals on the Hill:  Obama may be around longer than some of you who face reelection in 2010.  So get on the bus and lend a new idea, if possible.

To make matters worse, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the Republicans' latest heart throb to fill the vacuum left by Sarah Palin, laid a dinosaur egg in his response to Obama.  Democrats probably didn't regard it important enough to seriously evaluate it,  but conservative analysts were clearly troubled by the emptiness of Jindal's message. David Brooks grumbled, "I thought it (Jindal's speech) was poorly drafted  - but to come up at this point in history with a stale 'government is the problem...we can't trust government'...It's just a disaster for the Republican Party.  The country is in a  panic now."  Brooks said Jindal laid out a plan that was "a form of nihilism" and added that the current direction of the Republican Party toward a deeper ideological trench was "insane."  

There's more:  Brit Hume, the Fox News guru-emeritus, lamented that it was not "Jindal's greatest oratorical moment."    Others referred to Jindal's remarks as "simplistic"...."almost childish." Who is in charge of the GOP's central casting office anyway?  

Meanwhile, back on the Hill, McCain has accused the Republican National Committee of choosing a song for a presidential campaign ad, without his knowledge,  that is now in court for copyright infringement. And there are reprisals being mentioned by a  prominent member of the Bush family  against Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist for aupporting the stimulus. And Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who has been in trouble before, is threatening to sue the Republican National Committee, accusing it of trying to recruit another candidate to oppose Bunning in the primary.  Sen. John Cornyn , Texas Republican and chairman of the RNC's Senatorial Committee, denies it.  But listen to Bunning: "I don't believe anything that Cornyn says." 

Might it be time for the Republican Party to declare bankruptcy and start all over again with a whole new cast of characters?