You must be joking.
David Frum's party is taking this country in an economically suicidal direction. So, who does he blame for that? He blames Obama. He says, Obama shouldn't be trying to reason with them, negotiate in good faith.
But how does that make Obama to blame? If the Republicans were to concede some things, if they went and made a deal, Obama would almost certainly go for it. Why? Because Obama's interested in keeping things running.
It's bad enough that Frum pushes this idea. What makes it worse is that Democrats have taken up this notion. It's a self-destructive, self-defeating, and self-mutilating way to deal with the Republican Party.
Look, our biggest problem is that the Republicans have intimidated many of us, and frustrated many more. He's gotten us to cool our passion for change, and put us on the defensive. And now folks like Frum try to blame the heedless conformity and obstruction of his party on weak Democrats.
Bullshit. The problem isn't weak Democrats, it's fanatical Republicans, and we Democrats out here in America are choosing the easier targets of our fellow Democrats, of our President, rather than focusing our anger and our outrage at the people who are actually the functional essence of our problem.
Without the Republicans barricading against our legislation in the Senate, we would have gotten a lot more done, and the President could have steered more leftward, moderate legislation through. So, who do we blame, the lockstep Republican party, which deliberately lets nothing through? No, we do their political grunt work for them by blaming ourselves, making ourselves look feckless instead of making the Republicans look aggressively hostile to needed change. We took the moral responsibility off the Republicans, and put it on ourselves. Is it any wonder we took the blame for the economy?
Now look at the House. Do we blame the Republicans for being the elitist, callous, unreasoning, fanatically corrupt bastards that they are? No. Instead, we blame the President for not bargaining more firmly with them. Once again, we're transferring the moral failing for the Republicans from their shoulders, onto our own.
And why? The theory seems to be because it's worse when Democrats capitulate, or bow to the political reality, than when Republicans do exactly what they are expected to do.
Except, if the Republicans weren't doing exactly what we expect them to do, we wouldn't have a bloody problem! If the Republicans were giving us the deference we were giving them when they were in the majority, we would be in much better shape. if Democrats were running the house instead of Republicans, the Republicans wouldn't be able to keep the debt ceiling from being raised, and our nation wouldn't have a gun to its head.
Just because we can expect this moral failing of them, doesn't mean that attacking our own will solve a damn thing, because at the end of the day, the Republicans will still be doing what we expect them to do, and Americans will be suffering the consequences of that!
The Republicans want us to be responsible for why things are going wrong, while they skate along, unaccountable, unchallenged on their monstrous behavior. And we're going right along with their plan. We're blaming ourselves, blaming the weakness in our party.
It's not a workable political dynamic. It only sells cynical inactivity, the very spinelessness and weakness that gets communicated up towards our representatives and Senators.
When Democrats believed the country had their back, they pushed a boatload of historical legislation, that represented the greatest output of liberalism since the days of the Great Depression. That's what can happen when they feel they can take the risk of being liberal, more leftward in policy.
The Republican's political strategy was deliberately crafted to make liberalism toxic again, and to get us attacking ourselves, rather than taking the fight to them. It was deliberately crafted to drive us so nuts with our own people for not successfully pushing our agenda, that we would sabotage ourselves to spite those who failed to do our will.
And they succeeded. After all, what could you do about Republicans?
But there is plenty we can do about Republicans, plenty we can do to organize against them. We just got to be willing to take the fight to them each and every time they cross the line. If it seems like the Republicans are getting crushed, or that the population's opinion is raging against them, trust me, the centrists, the spineless, and the blue dogs will get the message. But if we do all that raging against them, and the Republicans remain strong and dominant? Well, they're going to say in their political safe place, and ignore us.
If the time of the Republican's domination is over, then so will be the time of their willful collaborators.
It's time to pit our movement against theirs, not accept the framing of a movement conservative and attack our own instead. It's time to knock the Republicans off their pedestal. It's time to hold them accountable. It's time to stop trying to self-mutilate our way towards a stronger party.