The ownership of failure

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Fred Barnes's Rovian "big idea" for Republican "recovery"? -- "ownership," that is, the ownership society, including (yes, here we go again) Social Security privatization. (So he argued yesterday at the WSJ.)

Sure, why not?

Pretty much everything else has failed, more failure, including more electoral defeat, lies on the horizon, Iraq has been, is, and will continue to be a disaster mitigated only by deception, Bush has been one of the worst presidents of all time, the GOP's primary political strategy teeters on the twin pillars of fearmongering and division, the party's internal divisions are as naked as ever, the candidates for its presidential nomination are uninspiring at best, irrational hope hoists an actor, or the generic character he plays, into the ranks of party stardom, and the party's two main ideas, or ideologies, are, at present, fascism and theocratism, Christian nationalism of a decidedly authoritarian nature.

Even Fred Barnes, Krazy Kristol's partner-in-lunacy at The Murdoch Standard, finds all that rather troubling, not because it's all inherently troubling but because the Republicans won't win if that's all they've got. (Can you feel his pain?)

Hence: "ownership." (Forget that Americans don't want what the Republicans want to give them. I'm sure there's some Rovian plan to scare them into submission once more.)

Hence this piece of advice: "The recipe for Republicans is to stop acting like, well, Republicans -- that is, Republicans of recent vintage."

Good luck with that. You know what they say about the leopard.