Sara Haile-Mariam

David Frum sounds off on Conservatives today to defend Steele saying:

“He’s not a black face, he’s just a different face,” he said. “We need different kinds of people. It isn’t ‘you put a black face on the party and you get black voters.”

Ehh… Yeah, they don’t need a different face they need a different approach and I don’t think that Michael Steele understands that. The whole party is so convinced that if they can just identify the right person, the Conservative Obama, to lead the charge that they’ll be ready to launch their come back. The truth is that their problem rests in their inability as a party to make room for multiple ideas. As Frum notes, their stance on abortion is nonnegotiable and although that appeals to certain people, it also excludes others. The Party seems to scoff at debate- I saw Tom Delay recently reject the notion that David Brooks was a “real” conservative simply because they held different positions.

Michael Steele is guilty of propagating this kind of strategy when he suggests that the GOP Senators who voted for the stimulus are going to get less funding from the RNC…

You can put lipstick on a pig…

“And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence—exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word—we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.”

Wow.

That was a pleasant surprise especially since I’m reading it after listening to Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press this morning.

First he throws in a one liner on how while dealing with the financial crisis we should admit that “controlling spending” is an alternative solution to raising taxes. To be clear, it’s not. Just moments before he made this argument they were having a discussion on how the Great Depression was caused in part because the government tried to control the deficit. In case you’re still trying to wrap you’re head around why Congress needed to pass the nearly 800 Billion dollar stimulus package-here’s a quick overview as I understand it.

Put simply, there’s a lack of capital and therefore consumption, the federal government needs to spend capital that is “stimulative” in other words that creates more capital through new jobs that put money in the hands of consumers who then go out and spend/ invest that money. It’s supposed to serve as a catalyst that gets the economy moving again. If people are spending than banks can confidently start lending money again, investor confidence rises, new businesses form which result in new jobs, unemployment rates go up etc. So the stimulus package is supposed to start a long term chain reaction. There are variety of other factors at play (the mortgage crisis, bad balance sheets, toxic assets). But so we’re clear, “controlling spending” would actually aggravate the problem.

Then he suggests Chris Matthews is the Democrats Rush Limbaugh..really? I’m sorry but there is really is no liberal equivalent to Rush. Democrats don’t have someone who carries so much sway that they feel the need to placate them. You don’t see Democrats apologizing to Chris, you don’t see MSNBC viewers calling in to Chris and Chris going back to the Democratic caucus demanding that they take a certain position or stance.

I’m honestly getting sick of the Rush Limbaugh fiasco and I apologize for spending so much time on it. There are so many other more important things going on that demand our attention.

Update: David Brooks also unloaded this morning calling the idea of a spending freeze insane.

“To young people, Steele just looks like he’s fronting.”

Great piece by Ari Melber.

I’ll have more to say on this later this week.