BOEHNER TO THE RESCUE

What brand again? Marlboros? Camels? Luck Strikes? Edsel?

The other day, when I was toolin' around Capitol Hill, I ran into a high ranking Repug, a friend of Minority Leader John Boehner's. As I frequently do, I mentioned that Boehner had left his tanning booth to do something or other. "One, no, no," said the Repug; "John spends all his time on the golf course." Oh, ok. Today's Washington Post asks the question What Are Republicans? and suggests that the aforementioned golfer plans to answer that question-- presumably better than Peggy Noonan did in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

Boehner thinks Americans are turning away from the GOP in disgust because they don't know the real Republicans, instead of realizing they just lived through 7 years of Republican one-party (mis)rule and are ready to not hear from the GOP again for a good long time. Americans know what a culture of endemic corruption is. Americans know what an illegal war and disastrously run occupation are. Americans understand what it means when authoritarians shred the U.S. Constitution.

Boehner took some time out from his golf game to posit a solution: "re-branding." He seems to have convinced himself between the 5th and 6th holes that the "Republicans' path to power rests on brand recognition. Boehner has convened a group of allies and confidantes to work on GOP "branding," an exercise designed to restore an identity to a party that many voters no longer see as holding a core set of principles. 'We're trying to look into our conscience and define ourselves, and as we define ourselves, decide how we can best communicate that to the rest of the world," said Rep. John Carter (Tex.), the Republican conference secretary and one of the effort's participants. "In other words, what are Republicans?" Perhaps Congressmen Carter and Boehner can ask Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, Ernie Fletcher, Ken Calvert, Lurita Doan, Tom Tancredo, Gary Miller, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Alberto Gonzales and all the U.S. Attorneys who were not fired, Karl Rove, Anne Coulter, Ted Haggard, Ted Stevens and his son Ben, Monica Goodling, Libby, Wolfowitz, Rumsfield, Abramoff, DeLay, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh... oh, and mustn't forget Dick and Lynne Cheney. I think that'll give you a pretty clear picture of what Republicans are. Perhaps illustrated with a picture of Boehner himself, handing out checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

To some House conservatives, the branding effort is navel-gazing in the middle of a hurricane. A Republican lobbyist familiar with the project, speaking on the condition of anonymity to maintain relations with GOP leaders, said it will be impossible to create a new Republican "brand" out of the House, while President Bush casts his shadow and image on the party.

Critics see the whole exercise, for better or for worse, as a distillation of Boehner's leadership style: feel-good consensus-building that eschews confrontation-- but to little effect. Boehner is personally popular, they say, but with the party in such a deep hole, he needs to be more of a public leader.

Yeah... like DeLay or Gingrich? That's what helped put them exactly where they are today. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans either want to vomit or kill someone if you say "Republican Party" in front of them.