Enter Macro Rubio who's a rising party star. If there is anyone the party thinks they stand to gain in having as the party's face it's him: a young, Latino Senator, adored by the Tea Party base. His speech last night though was grudging and seemed to be more about complaining about the President than anything constructive. It also kind of brought back memories of Clint Eastwood debating a chair last August, with his weird moment slurping water. It seems that the party can't afford even a single unscripted moment or all hell breaks loose.
Everything shows, however, that the American people want leadership now, not more partisan gridlock and a GOP that is about nothing except opposing the President at every turn.
"Republicans face a choice. Either they can accept the realities of public opinion and become a functional opposition party, by working with Obama and Democrats to get some of what they want while allowing Obama to claim some victories of his own, as unbearable a prospect as that might seem. This is what Newt Gingrich eventually did in the 1990s. Or they can continue to reflexively obstruct everything, with an eye towards — well, it’s not clear what this would accomplish, except kicking the can down the road in hopes of taking back the Senate in 2014, making it even easier to tie up Obama’s agenda in advance of another grab at the White House in 2016."
"Yesterday’s rebuttal by Marco Rubio was not encouraging. He rehashed many of the same old anti-government bromides that were soundly defeated in the 2012 election. As Steve Benen notes, the speech suggested that that Republicans are absolutely convinced that “there are no substantive lessons to be learned from their 2012 defeats.” Rubio’s primary statement outlining the GOP vision for government’s role in people’s lives amounted to this: “It plays a crucial part in keeping us safe, enforcing rules, and providing some security against the risks of modern life.” This isn’t an affirmative vision. It’s a grudging concession."
"If Republicans are going to become a functional opposition party, and start trying to get at least some of what they want, they have to figure out what it is they want in policy terms, other than “whatever Obama doesn’t want.” Josh Barro’s advice for Republicans:
They need to signal that they have a serious policy agenda that considers programs and regulations on a case-by-case basis, rather than just demagoguing the government. They need a real agenda on health care and jobs rather than just opportunistic opposition to anything the president does. In other words, they need a message that befits a grown-up party that is ready to govern.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/02/13/the-morning-plum-obamas-ambitious-second-term-agenda-intensifies-gops-dilemma/
Krugman was particularly irked by Rubio's attempt to again blame the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession on Barney Frank, Jimmy Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act:
"OK, back up: this morning the papers and the web are full of nuance-sniffing, as people try to find omens in the SOTU and the GOP response. I don’t think I can add anything useful to all that. But there was one important point in Marco Rubio’s remarks that I don’t think has been highlighted. It’s true, as Andy Rosenthal says, that Rubio mainly reminded us that Republicans don’t like government or taxes; surprise! But he also reminded us that Republicans don’t like reality.
Here’s the passage:
This idea – that our problems were caused by a government that was too small – it’s just not true. In fact, a major cause of our recent downturn was a housing crisis created by reckless government policies."OK, leave on one side the caricature of Obama, with the usual mirror-image fallacy (we want smaller government, therefore liberals just want bigger government, never mind what it does); there we go with the “Barney Frank did it” story. Deregulation, the explosive growth of virtually unregulated shadow banking, lax lending standards by loan originators who sold their loans off as soon as they were made, had nothing to do with it — it was all the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie, and Freddie."
"Look, this is one of the most thoroughly researched topics out there, and every piece of the government-did-it thesis has been refuted; see Mike Konczal for a summary. No, the CRA wasn’t responsible for the epidemic of bad lending; no, Fannie and Freddie didn’t cause the housing bubble; no, the “high-risk” loans of the GSEs weren’t remotely as risky as subprime."
"This really isn’t about the GSEs, it’s about the BSEs — the Blame Someone Else crowd. Faced with overwhelming, catastrophic evidence that their faith in unregulated financial markets was wrong, they have responded by rewriting history to defend their prejudices."
"This strikes me as a bigger deal than whether Rubio slurped his water; he and his party are now committed to the belief that their pre-crisis doctrine was perfect, that there are no lessons from the worst financial crisis in three generations except that we should have even less regulation. And given another shot at power, they’ll test that thesis by giving the bankers a chance to do it all over again."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/marco-rubio-has-learned-nothing/
They still haven't figured out what got us in this mess. As usual they go cosmetic. They lacerate Bush-as his popularity is so low even among Republicans this is not surprising. Yet at the end of the day they claim that Bush was a big high spending liberal. While they debate what their strategy should be, the one thing they've ruled out then, apparently, is to actually question any of their policies.
They have the look of a party that's going to be in the wilderness for a long time.
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