What's Ailing the GOP?
House Republicans may be heading off a cliff in November, but give them credit for perseverance. Even after the new slogan they floated -- "The Change You Deserve" -- was discovered to be trademarked ad copy for the antidepressant drug Effexor, GOP leaders decided to go with the rollout anyway.
"The Republican agenda, 'The Change You Deserve,' is directed at America's families," Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) announced at a televised news conference with House Republican leaders yesterday morning. "And you may be a little surprised at this agenda."
Why, yes, we are. And Democrats are manic over the medicinal mantra.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) called reporters into his office. "Democrats, not drugs, is what the American people need," he said. He flashed the Effexor side effects on a large flat-screen television. "Nausea, up to 58 percent," Hoyer said. "Actually it's higher than that for Republicans."
"Are depression symptoms keeping you from where you want to be?" Effexor's maker, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, asks in its promotions. "Not feeling as good as you used to?"
For House Republicans, the diagnosis is obvious: They are suffering from Election Anxiety Disorder. Tuesday night, they lost the third special election in a row to Democrats in heavily Republican congressional districts. Eighty-two percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track, and they're largely holding President Bush and his party responsible. This week, panicked House Republicans defied Bush and voted with Democrats to pass a farm bill and to divert oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
-- Dana Milbank
By Dana Milbank |
May 15, 2008; 7:00 AM ET
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Posted by: cathy sienkaniec | May 15, 2008 10:17 AM
And this poll says it all. You won't believe these results!
Posted by: votenik | May 15, 2008 9:21 PM
they followed bush over a cliff...now they're suprised that they are all falling.
Only in Jesusland can this happen
Posted by: bproulx | May 17, 2008 5:52 PM
ZA42wU
Posted by: dNqGcPYTG | May 17, 2008 9:51 PM
Republicans have had a rough week.
Gay marriage in California, FEC nominee holdout finally throwing in the towel, Bush begging hat in hand to the Saudis to no avail, unable to hold any terror trials because some "activist" lawyer thinks confessions obtained under torture should be disallowed.
What's a fascist to do these days?
Get used to it.
Posted by: KAckermann | May 18, 2008 2:47 AM
The whole rethuglican crack-up is laughing-out-loud funny! Just two years ago these lying, plutocratic scumbags dreamed of a "permanent republican majority", what with the cash from their "K Street Project" and a servile corporate media (Washington Post very much included) spewing their fact-free talking points 24/7. And they did a lot! They cut taxes for the top 1%, skewed income to the top 1%, lied us into the disasterous Iraq war, let an American city drown, and tried to gut Social Security.
These last three efforts exposed rethuglicans for what they truly are, a ravening pack of lying, warmongering plutocrats who are also utterly incompetent at governing. Fortunately, they have been deprived of power in Congress and are about to lose the Presidency.
Rooting them out of the Courts and the Media will take a bit longer though.
Posted by: wanderer3764 | May 19, 2008 3:20 AM
I was hoping to read or watch just whatever it was that the Republicans were going to change, and couldn't find it. I assume, then, that it is just the slogan itself, and nothing more, that is that all the change we are going to get is a change in slogans.
When a Republican gets turned out of office, it isn't because he is a crook, or his party is flat out wrong, or his incompetence is blatantly obvious, it is just that the voters weren't properly made to understand the candidate.
We under stand the candidate, and we understand the platform. Obama has proved in abundant measure that come November the electorate will have their change.
Plagiarized slogans won't stop that.
Posted by: ceflynline@msn,com | May 20, 2008 7:14 PM
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Dear Dana,
The election in November will be a landslide for Obama......yes, it will.
We live in a plutocracy, borrowing money from communists to spread democracy? I talk to people where ever I go about the insanity that exists.......my final comment is always, "well, I am going to start a revolution" and the response is always, "SIGN ME UP!"