The GOP Bataan Death March

I'm doing my best to disagree with Chris Cillizza's embarrassing story in the Washington Post today without being nasty or demeaning to Chris. He asks a question that many Inside the Beltway are asking-- but no one else: Are Republicans On The March?. Over the cliff? To hell in a handbasket? The Villagers couldn't wait to trumpet the news: Obama has no coattails because Democrats lost in three post-Nov 4th elections in the heart of the old Confederacy. Chris leads with their wishful cockamamie thinking:

In the wake of an election cycle dominated by bad news for Republicans, the last five days have been a welcome relief.

Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss cruised to a runoff victory last Tuesday, and House Republicans held Louisiana's 4th district and pulled off a massive upset win over Rep. Bill Jefferson in Louisiana's 2nd district on Saturday.

Those three developments have led some Republicans to insist that what happened on Nov. 4 was almost entirely due to President-elect Barack Obama's unique electoral appeal and that when the soon-to-be-president is not on the ballot-- the 2010 midterm elections-- his party will not fare nearly as well.

And there's no one better to bring this argument to its bitterest extreme of absurdity than the Republican Party's silly and lazy House Minority Leader, John Boehner, who said, "The Cao victory is a symbol of our future. In the two years ahead, House Republicans will demonstrate our commitment to reform by holding ourselves to the highest possible ethical standard...[and] presenting principled, superior solutions to the challenges facing our country."

The chances of Cao retaining the seat he won Saturday-- in a D+28 district where African-American voters didn't bother going to the polls to endorse one of Congress' most corrupt members, William Jefferson. The Democrats will have a better candidate in two years-- unless Cao is savvy enough to give up his GOP membership and join the Democrats. He's a lifelong independent who joined the Republican Party very recently.

As far as Cao's victory being a symbol of the GOP's future, Boehner better hope it isn't a symbol of his own because if his bribery and corruption charges are ever seriously investigated, he could easily wind up sharing a jail cell with Jefferson (unless Jefferson decides to hang with the Bloods and Boehner sticks with the Aryan Brotherhood).

The biggest irony here is that Boehner's handpicked candidate to replace former Republican Party House leader Deborah Pryce in OH-15, banking lobbyist Steve Stivers, lost his seat in a purple district to an out and out, unabashed progressive Democrat, Mary Jo Kilroy, and conceded yesterday. Boehner neglected to mention it. And even, towards the end of his column, when Chris debunks the idiotic meme he perpetuated in the first half of his column, he seems to have missed the significance of Kilroy's victory. Obama shook Georgia up a great deal. In 2004 Bush won Georgia with 58% of the vote. That's RED. This year McCain scraped by with 52% and Chambliss' 57% win cost him $12,559,124 (Martin only spent $4,810,604) and IOU's to every big name Republican looking for allies for 2012, from Giuliani and Romney to Palin and Huckabee. It wouldn't surprise me if the GOP dragged Joe the Plumber and Dick Cheney down there.

The race in LA-04 is so close-- 44,497 to 44,141-- that a recount will determine who actually won and who lost. And that's a solidly Republican district (R+7) where McCain beat Obama by 19 points! And, of course, Jefferson didn't win because Cao is a Republican or because Cao is or isn't anything else-- other than not William Jefferson and not indicted on 16 counts of bribery and corruption. As Chris concludes, correctly, at the bottom of his column, "These victories do not solve the problems Republicans as a party face-- a shrinking base, a lack of clarity on core principles-- but they lay the foundation for at least the possibility of a comeback in 2010 and beyond." Oops-- except for that last little Villager bit he just couldn't control from coming out. Easier than fitting something in about Kilroy I guess.