Where are the GOP’s ideas, plans?

Brian Till

Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The young, aspiring Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia’s seventh congressional district launched what looked like an exciting effort to recast his party last winter. It began in a packed strip mall pizza parlor in Arlington with the aim of engaging regular Americans with an Obama-style outreach both on the Web and in town halls. It has fizzled and failed.

Meghan McCain brought a breath of fresh, young thought, arguing that a successful Republican Party would have to abandon Bush and Bushies, reevaluate the way it thought about gays, sex and the vicious-toned leaders such as Ann Coulter. She failed. Most young Republicans have washed her aside; most of the old guard have dug in their heels.

Michael Steele, the controversial black chairman of the RNC since January, was pro-choice on March 11 before recanting on March 12, and while on the radio with New York DJ Curtis Sliwa, called out some “slum love” to his “buddy Gov. Bobby Jindal,” a reference to Jindal’s Indian heritage and the film “Slumdog Millionaire.” Failed.

Right now the face of the GOP is screaming seniors clutching fake Obama birth documents and the legions of ill-informed wailing about death panels.

It’s the same visceral hate that reared its head toward the end of the presidential campaign, as McCain slipped out of contention and Sarah Palin became the headline rather than the subtitle. Rallies, including several I attended in Northern Virginia, turned violent, with shouts from the crowd ranging from “Kill him,” in reference to Obama, to “Terrorist,” and worse.

Then, when asked about their qualms with Obama, few could offer intelligible responses.

Now, for every decent question one hears at a health care town hall, there are several repeats and several comments intended to do little more than malign. People cling to issues of abortion and socialism, rather than asking the right questions, about how effectively this will keep spending from spiraling beyond the lithosphere. One likely outcome is that Congress, after returning from its recess battering, will simply concede that the public’s understanding of reforms is too limited, and push forward with less regard for opposition.

Isn’t the largest question how to pay for the trillion-dollar investment the reforms demand?

There is no Republican plan for health care reform; there is also no one across the aisle who can stand in front of a town hall who can articulate the merits or the shortcomings of the proposed reforms the way Obama can.

Preisdent Franklin Roosevelt passed Social Security without a single Republican vote in the House. Health care reform will likely pass in a similar manner this fall, but the rage of the right will remain. It’s a reflection and the antithesis of the left’s frustrations and outbursts during the Bush years. But someone managed to capture that emotion. Who on the right has the talent to mold this force into something substantive, something informed, something that resembles a cogent, even contributing opposition?

My guess is it’s not Sarah Palin — but one doesn’t see much else out there in the field.

Brian Till, a columnist for Creators Syndicate, is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington.