Britt Combs: Republicans hopelessly fragmented

Some Republican leaders, punch-drunk from the whipping they've received in the past couple of political seasons, are taking the initiative in rebranding the party by launching a Clintonesque "listening tour." Calling themselves the National Council for a New America, former governors Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor sat down to "chat" with a cherry-picked group of mind-numbed average Americans last weekend and answer a few well-rehearsed questions about health care and college tuition.

It's the latest chapter in America's sham "two party" monopoly. They must periodically reinvent themselves each time their actions cause them to fall into disrepute.

Their methods, both Republicans and Democratics, are unwavering: Trot out the same old corrupt swine and let them babble a few catch phrases about "returning power to the people" and "making government work for all Americans." It's a horribly scratched and warped record, but it's guaranteed to get the toes a-tapping every time.

The Republicans are in the enviable position of not being expected to deliver anything. They have lost any say in the legislative process. No one can expect them to pass, or block, any legislation. They need not show results, so they can promise anything they think will sell.

That's a two-edged knife. On the one edge you seem irrelevant, just standing aside complaining instead of helping out with the touchy feely bipartisanship. You get a reputation for being negative, which the voters claim to dislike. But on the other edge you build up an archive of I-told-you-sos that will come in handy when the Democrats yet again bungle things disasterously.

Rest assured, the Obama shopping spree -- the orgy of spending on social engineering projects and aimless public works and bailouts for the big party contributors – will not end the recession. You've read it in this space before, friends: No one has ever borrowed their way out of debt and no government has ever hyper-inflated its way to prosperity.

So when the next generation of economic chickens come home to roost, the glorious Republicans will be there to claim the spoils and halt recovery. "See, we were saying this way back in '09." They will count on the fact that you will not remember the Bush years. (Just as the Obama campaign counted on your not remembering the Clinton years. Just as Clinton counted on you not remembering the Carter years. And so on.)

So a gang of tired, washed-up hacks – Romney, Bush and Cantor – set about the business of rephrasing "compassionate conservatism" for a new generation of suckers. Will they bite? History says the electorate will tire of the Democratics in eight to 12 years, and will switch back.

It's only a question of which brand of Republican will emerge to take the next victory. While the aforementioned intellectual giants cast themselves as big tent moderates, the Limbaughs and Hannitys and O'Reillys and Joe The Plumbers demand the party hunker down behind the barricades of "core conservative values."

These so-called "conservatives" can't explain their support for Bush. They can't rationalize how their claimed belief in financial responsibility and limited government jibed with Bush's spending, social engineering, big-government spying tactics and tyrannical interpretation of executive powers. How can they hope to claim an electoral majority with that? On the one hand they have driven away the fiscally conservative/socially liberal wing of their support – the crowd the National Council for a New America hope to woo.

Worse still, they have driven away the very limited government/rule of law conservatives they came to regard as their core in the post-Goldwater era. It should not be ignored that, as tiny as his four- or five percent were, Ron Paul captured a wing that would not settle for McCain. They just didn't vote; they voted for another party or they even voted for Obama, just the get the destruction over with.

So don't believe the talking heads. The Republican party is not split in two. It's split in three, at least.

Basically the only people left in the party are people who lie awake at night paralyzed with fear, imagining hordes of married gays swarming the streets and terrorizing the children. Like, wow, man. That's some party platform you got there, Rush. Be sure and write if you get work, buddy.
The one great hope they have is that Osama bin Laden will attack again. If that happens the Republicans get another chance to use tyranny to protect us from tyranny. Irony! Al Qaida represents the best hope of the Republican party for a return to power. How pathetic can you get?