Again, I've got to hand it to Steve Benen for expressing how I felt when I watched the Republican response to the President's Weekly Address.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered the Republicans' weekly address yesterday, and repeated plenty of tired talking points. Listeners learned, for example, that those rascally Democrats intend to "remake America in the image of Europe." Gripping stuff.
But there was a phrase that Cantor mentioned that stood out for me. The frequently-confused Republican leader said that if voters backed the GOP in November, his party would offer "responsible, adult leadership."
Now, of all the things Republicans have to offer the electorate, perhaps no three words in the English language are less appropriate than "responsible, adult leadership." As should be abundantly clear by now, today's GOP officials approach their responsibilities and substantive discourse with all the maturity of a child. A young child. A young, slow child. A medicated, young, slow child who's easily distracted and hasn't learned social norms about honesty.
Jacob Weisberg notes in his latest piece that there were responsible, adult leaders in the Republican Party in the not-too-distant past, but they've gone missing.
As Steve noted and as I've also written about here, the Republicans are simply not a serious political party right now. They have nothing to offer other than attacking the Democrats at every turn and they are more than willing to use every means at their disposal to assure they get back into power.
Go read all of Steve's post for more on this but I'll quote him one more time on Cantor.
Cantor is promising "responsible, adult leadership"? From whom, exactly? When was the last time a Republican leader said something intelligent and accurate about any area of public policy? When was the last time the GOP acted in a responsible fashion during a substantive debate? When was the last time the nation saw so much as a glimmer of maturity from any member of the party leadership?
Weisberg concluded, "The rise of hyperpartisanship is not one of those problems for which the left and right are equally to blame. Democrats, who like legislating better than Republican do, and who have seldom had the GOP's ability to march in lockstep, still instinctively prefer to work on a bipartisan basis. They continue to hope, against the odds, that [Responsible Republicans] will escape extinction and one day provide partners for them again."
As Steve added in his post, this won't happen until this starts costing them some elections. Sadly with the media enabling them and their astroturf teabagger movement to be seen as somehow mainstream instead of fringe, that makes the getting these people out of office all the much harder. These people need to go the way of the Know Nothings. Just how badly they have to behave before it forces the media to acknowledge it is beyond me. Right now, almost nothing seems to be out of bounds for them to consider how the party is acting to be extremist.
