Frank Rich's excellent column for the Sunday New York Times exposes the Republican "loyal opposition" as far less loyal than they would claim.
And he gives a nod to none other than Markos Moulitsas Zuniga for pointing out the bankruptcy of ideas the Republicans offer!
Note: The column is not on the New York Times Web site yet, but should be at http://www.nytimes.com soon.
UPDATE: Rich's column is now online here: http://www.nytimes.com/...
Here is a taste:
The current GOP acts as if it -- and we -- have all the time in the world. It kept hoping in vain that the fast-waning Blago sideshow would somehow impale Obama or Rahm Emanuel. It has come perilously close to wishing aloud that a terrorist attack will materialize to discredit Obama's reversals of Bush policy on torture, military tribunals and Gitmo. The party's sole consistent ambition is to play petty politics to gum up the works.
The Republicans, Rich notes, are simply AWOL.
Promising ideas at some point ...
but certainly not NOW in the midst of this grave economic crisis.
If anything, the Republican congressional leadership seems to be emulating John McCain's September stunt of "suspending" his campaign to "fix" the Wall Street meltdown. For all his bluster, McCain in the end had no fixes to offer and sat like a pet rock at the White House meeting on the crisis before capitulating to the bailout. His imitators likewise posture in public about their determination to take action, then do nothing while more and more Americans cry for help.
Rich points out that the Republicans appear to have "zero leaders and zero ideas."
House minority leader John Boehner insists the Republicans will not be "the party of 'No'" and will offer "better solutions."
When> Well, he'll get back to us "over the coming months."
And here is Rich's salute to Kos himself:
His (Boehner's) deputy, the Virginia congressman Eric Cantor, has followed the same script, claiming that the GOP will not be "the party of 'No'" but will someday offer unspecified "solutions and alternatives." Not to be left out, the party's great white hope, Sarah Palin, unveiled a new political action committee last week with a Web site also promising "fresh ideas." But as the liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga observed, the site invites visitors to make donations and read Palin hagiography while offering no links to any ideas, fresh or otherwise.
And Rich slams the GOP for being held hostage by the demagogue Rush Limbaugh, saying the GOP leadership appears to be in "morbid terror" of the Pillsbury Doughboy of Talk Radio.
Rich is notes Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Georgia's "pathetic" attempts to kiss Rush's butt after the dittoheads went ballistic about some mild criticism of Rush and Sean Hannity.
... Gingrey ..., who mildly criticized both Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Politico because they "stand back and throw bricks" while lawmakers labor in the trenches. So many called Gingrey's office to complain that the poor congressman begged Limbaugh to bring him on air to publicly recant Wednesday. As Gingrey abjectly apologized to talk radio's commandant for his "stupid comments" and "foot-in-mouth disease," he sounded like the inmate in a B-prison-movie cowering before the warden after a failed jailbreak.
Rich says the Republicans are proving themselves "irrelevant, clowning and childish" amid this great economic emergency.
It's time for them to either lead, follow, grow up, or get out of the @&#@^ way!~