David "I love prostitutes" Vitters joins Limbaugh in wanting America to fail; RNC chair repudiated by RNC

Original Link: http://pwtenny.newsvine.com/_news/2009/03/04/2506706-david-i-love-prostitutes-vitters-joins-limbaugh-in-wanting-america-to-fail-rnc-chair-repudiated-by-rnc

Paul William Tenny

David Vitter (R-LA) epitomizes the hypocrisy that has destroyed any credibility that the GOP had with the American people after Republicans were handed control of Congress during the Clinton administration. The last Republican president ordered the torture of innocent people, the illegal detention of American citizens by the military without charge, had alcohol and drug problems in his past, dodged the Vietnam war himself while starting two others. The last Republican candidate cheated on his crippled wife and then left her to marry a much younger woman.

And Vitter? Like so many supposed "family value' social conservatives, they don't practice what they preach. Vitter was caught up in the "DC Madame" prostitution scandal. While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was forced by Republicans to resign after enduring a prostitution scandal of his own, Vitter wasn't even swept under the rug. Facing a tough reelection in 2010, Vitter has made himself highly visible as reliable, partisan opposition to President Obama's agenda. He was a front man against the auto industry loans, and practically every other piece of legislation pushed by his President.

Vitter has joined a growing chorus of right-wing extremists wishing for American recovery to fail. Michele Malkin, Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay, and now David Vitter have joined Rush Limbaugh in wishing for the President's recovery efforts to fail, causing the recession to worsen and for more Americans to suffer, just because it would benefit their party politically. On a related note, Vitter is vigorously opposing family planning funding in the new budget. Again, this is the guy who was caught frequenting a prostitution ring, that is trying to lecture the country on how to spend money on "family values" issues.

Is it any wonder why Republicans were stripped of all power in Washington?

It seems as if the media decided to invent a new piece of conventional beltway wisdom in order to turn the mostly leaderless GOP civil war into a grand conspiracy by Democrats to..well, nobody actually gets that far. It serves their purpose to push the narrative that it's all the Democrats doing and that if they'd just leave the poor GOP alone -- JUST LEAVE THEM ALONE -- they could get back on their feet and stop the evil liberals from ruining the country.

Again.

Honestly, if the Democratic party were capable of manipulating the GOP this way all this time, why did they wait until just now to do it, when it could have had far more serious consequences for the country and that party back when Bush was torturing prisoners, and having legal memos drafted which say he can order the U.S. military to kill American citizens on American soil merely because he personally labeled them terrorists?

I think a lot of good things could have been done by undoing the Republican party during the horrific Bush years, but Democrats aren't nearly that smart or capable.

The only thing happening now is the natural result of getting the ultimate, once in a lifetime opportunity to do anything your party desires, only to have the result of unfettered political power nearly destroy the country's economy without accomplishing any long-term goals. Republicans held the White House, Senate, and House, but couldn't muster immigration reform, ran the economy into the ground, launched a Jihad against Muslim terrorists with pathetic, nearly non-existent results.

al-Qeada is still out there, along with bin Laden. Terrorist attacks globally have risen, not fallen, since 9/11. Afghanistan and Pakistan are teetering on the edge, and despite all the tough talk from Israel and Bush, Iran appears to be well on their way towards having The Bomb. The latter situation has gotten so ridiculous that some people are now arguing that we blew it, and simply need to accept the fact that Iran is a player, and there's nothing we can do to change it.

These are but a few of the reasons why the GOP is in complete disarray. Conservatives had a dream come true, they revered George Bush as a minor deity and had the opportunity to reshape America in their image for nearly eight straight years. Going back a little further, five of the last eight presidents have been Republicans, serving a total of 28 years of the last 40. 70% of the last four decades has seen America run by a Republican.

A run of power like that is a significant responsibility, and the public understands the equally significant failure to achieve much of anything over that time. This is why the party has no valid leader and why the minor party players are sniping each other in the media. Sure, Democrats are egging it along, but they didn't make this mess. The GOP has taken forty years to get to this point and it'll take a sizable amount of time to fix it.

To make explicitly clear just how burned out the GOP is, look at a report from the Politico today. Recently elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele, a man intimately involved in the struggle for power with Rush Limbaugh (and recently caved to Limbaugh, giving the radio entertainer a strong claim to leadership over the GOP), was asked by Fox News if he was open to funding primary challenges for moderate Republican Senators who helped pass an extremely popular President's economic recovery legislation. Steele told Fox "I'm always open to everything, baby, absolutely."

Politico contacted the RNC which immediately threw its new chairman under the bus: "The RNC has no interest in getting involved in primaries."

For the record, I support primary challenges, but not when they are backed by a national committee. They are a great way of keeping politicians accountable to their constituents, in the truest spirit of democracy that I can think of -- it's all about the best candidate, or in this case the better candidate, not about the party. The reason I'm bringing any of this up is to drive home how badly the GOP has fallen apart, and to highlight the reasons why.

It was no deeply held secret that Washington Democrats strongly disagreed with DNC Chairman Howard Dean's strategy pretty much up until the day he retired from the post, and was replaced by Tim Kaine (still a sitting Governor) who doesn't seem to truly support Dean's extremely successful 50-state strategy. Democrats have their infighting, too, but I believe that infighting is the healthy kind that's bred of an interest in bettering the party. GOP infighting is more about control over the rebuilding process that inevitably follows such a historic implosion.

This bit of concern trolling on my part I think bears repeating. Electing Michael Steele was as big of a mistake as all the caving to Rush Limbaugh. Steele's inability to lead, and Rush's insatiable lust for power are two big reasons why the GOP finds itself where it is today, and if they don't examine those failures, none of this is going to get better for them. They need to ground their new ideas in the belief that everything they are doing should be in service of the country as a whole, not just their extreme right-wing, or even the base. They, as a party, have to at least appear to be representing all of us.

If they aren't capable of doing that, then It's only going to get worse for them while life gets better for the rest of us.