Bunning: a bit player in GOP assault on Obama

NOW THAT MANY of us (except Fox News) have had a little fun over Jim Bunning's meltdown that jammed up the government for a day or so, the more likely version of this mad tale is that he was not really acting alone. Instead, he was merely an unsightly spurt from the boil that forms the seething Republican enclave on Capitol Hill. In the nanosecond after Bunning's first claim to the national media-driven spotlight, it is fair to conclude that some of his partisan colleagues were satisfied that his Caligulan rant had served their cause well in further debasing the Obama Administration. Some even muttered as much. But when the returns came in that the Kentucky senator may have gone too far in holding up his entire party to further ridicule, the game was up. Given Bunning's loony track record on The Hill, no Republican could happily adopt him as the GOP's poster boy - even if they agreed that he got it right.

We are long past the stage of constructive dialogue in Congress, which seriously puts a halt to social progress in a system that most of us with even minimal historical awareness call a democracy and the other side sneers is socialism. The sickness runs incurably deep. Since the day that Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office - Barack Hussein Obama! - the Old South began its dramatic return to the podium with the vibrant assistance of the GOP's high priest, Rush Limbaugh, unapologetically aided and abetted by a television network whose deception begins with the kooky assurance that it is fair and balanced.

Why has the unanimous assault from the political right been so much more bitterly sustained beyond ordinary ideological disagreement? . The most entrenched element, less and less muted as time goes on, is racism. Losing to a Democrat, as has happened from time to time in presidential politics, is one thing. Losing to an African-American Democrat is unacceptably something else. Particularly for the political party that is not represented by a single black in Congress.

As Columnist Bob Cesca writes in the Huffington Post:

"...when you strip away all of the rage, all of the nonsensical loud noises and all of the contradictions, all that's left is race. The tea party is almost entirely about race, and there's no comparative group on the left that's similarly motivated by bigotry and racial hatred."

So-called mainstream Republicans have stood before angry crowds and stared diectly into the ugly racist placards with indifference. At the same time, Cesca notes that Limbaugh "can stoke racial animosity on his show by suggesting health-care reform is a civil rights bill - reparation - and no one seems to mind. The Tea Party is an extension of talk radio...of the Fox News Channel. It's an extension of the southern faction of the Republican Party - the faction that gave us the Southern Strategy, the Willie Horton ad, the White Hands ad , the racially divisive politics of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. It's an extension of the race-baiting and, often, of the outright racism evident in all of those conservative spheres."

In the grand scheme of things, Jim Bunning was no more than a bit player who enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame for the team. Unfortunately, there will be others.

Bunning's one plus one: Two trillion $$$$

While Jim Bunning has his defenders in trashing an extension of unemployment benefits because they are too expensive, he was quite supportive of George Bush's tax cuts (at left, in 2001) that ripped more than $1 trillion from the federal treasury. Bunning also strongly supported Bush's $1 trillion Iraq war. My math is usually terrible, but it does appear to add up to $2 trillion - or more. (Notice how all of the budget hawks are happily wearing black suits, funereal fashion, in photo.)

How to create the living dead

I WONDER HOW much better off we would all be today  if some people had been more concerned about the death toll in Iraq as they are in fussing over the death of a couple of living Americans.  First. Sen. Jim Bunning, the goofy Kentucky Republican who is the tormentor of his own party these days, predicted that  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg would be dead in 90 days; and now Rush Limbaugh has referred to President Obama's promise to reform America's health-care system as the "Kennedy memorial"  scheme for cancer-stricken Sen. Ted Kennedy, to which we would look to the U.S.  Army's special legal counsel during the McCarthy hearings for an appropriate response.  Sizzling with quiet indignation over Joe McCarthy's attacks on certain individuals As Commies, Joe Welch scorched the  Wisconsin red-baiting senator:

"Have you  no sense of decency, at long last?  Have you left no sense of decency?"

Keep those words in mind.  I'm sure there will be many more opportunities from the GOP's Great White Whale to recall them.)  

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?  

D Light is not a beer label.

AHEM.   THE ANGER on the daffy side of the Republican spectrum is leading me through a maze of newly-coined terms to refer to those Republicans deemed to be soft-headed about political moderation.  It wasn't that long ago that Michelle Malkin, an entry-level political theorist on the right, was hyperventilating with a special label for Republicans who might  agree with President Obama on such squishy matters about whether the earth orbits the sun, or whether a week was actually divided into seven days.  Ms. Malkin  referred to such impure conservatives as Bend Over Republicans.  One should not rush into the obvious  connotations.   

Now comes a fellow named George T. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush  - get used to it, folks, there's no end to the Bush family's domestic livestock  - who is threatening Florida's popular Republican  Gov. Charlie Crist for supporting Obama's stimulus package.   George T. hisses that Crist is D Light.   Although it hints at the code name for some  CIA operation, it means nothing more sinister than Democrat Light.  Such playful  trivia  might be useful for a contestant on Jeopardy,  but for a political faction still in the dark backwash of the November election it will have to be far more creative to salvage what little remains of their ideological boomerangs. 

There are an increasing number of apologies shaking out of the GOP's dirges these days.  Sen. Jim Bunning, of Kentucky, recanted his prediction that Justice Ruth Bader Ginzberg would be dead of pancreatic cancer in nine months.  How gross!   Earlier Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama joined the small chorus of Obama detractors by saying that Obama was an alien and serving illegally.     One of Shelby's aides later said, gosh, the senator was only jesting.  Right.  

Unfortunately, the loyal opposition, usually welcome in the two-party system, has troubled itself into a silly cadre of playground bullies with little to show for their huffs and puffs.  They have become more tiresome than terrifying.