Stuck on stupid

David Limbaugh wrote in Townhall I believe General Russel Honore’s classic admonition to reporters, "Don’t get stuck on stupid," was one of the best lines so far of the new millennium. Part of its enduring value is its uncanny applicability to politics these days. Honore made the statement to reporters who insisted on asking questions about Katrina when he was trying to focus on Rita. He said there would be plenty of time later to sort through inadequacies in the government’s response to Katrina, but for now they need to deal with Rita’s impending wrath. "Don’t get stuck on stupid," thus became an instant metaphor -- at least to me -- for "Quit playing gotcha, quit dwelling in the past, and help us with solutions."

Honore’s metaphor perfectly fits the behavior of Washington Democrat politicians and caterwauling liberal loons since 2000 -- that’s right, the entire millennium, so far. In their singular obsession with George W. Bush -- "hatred" is probably more accurate -- they have been "stuck on stupid."To clarify, I’m not calling Washington Democrats and the whacko left fringe stupid.

They may not be stupid, but they are certainly filled with hate, so maybe the expression should be "Don't get stuck on hate."

Far from it. I am saying, though, that their perspective has been tainted by their consuming antipathy for George Bush. They don’t even deny their contempt for President Bush but wear it proudly. I think they would deny, however, its irrationality and poisonous effects. Many of them seem to think it’s a completely rational reaction to his "contemptible" policies, particularly the war with Iraq. What they don’t tell you is that their ill will for him significantly preceded our invasion of Iraq, which many of them, by the way, supported. Their unhealthy hatred for Mr. Bush dates back to the 2000 election, which they -- irrationally again -- believe he stole from Mr. Gore. The fact is, Mr. Gore was trying to steal the election himself and almost succeeded, through one of the most egregious perversions of the rule of law in our nation’s history, by the Florida Supreme Court.

And that is why they are so ticked off. It is because they did not succeed in stealing the election. They are used to winning elections through voter fraud, but that was not enough in 2000. And they really wanted to win. And were really very mad when it did not work out the way they wanted it to.

But the real source of their animus is even more basic. They resent him because he represents their expulsion from power over the executive branch, which the Clinton eight-year heyday should have ensured them in perpetuity.

They also were ticked off because the Republicans had both houses plus the White House.

You’ll recall that their "entitlement" to the legislative branch was stolen from them in 1994, which is one of the reasons they consider Newt Gingrich another personification of evil. Adding insult to cumulative injury, they’ve also lost their monopoly on the media over the last 15 years. The intensity of their blinding hatred for Bush compels them to view all problems through their anti-Bush lenses.

And their blinding hatred prevented them from getting a number of things they wanted. Bush campaigned about being a uniter rather than a divider because he was able to work with the Democrats in the Texas Legislature to come up with compromise solutions. But the Dems in Washington were so filled with hatred that they resisted all of his efforts to reach out to them for compromise.

How many of them could bring themselves to rejoice, for example, over the historic elections in Iraq and the people’s courageous embracing of self-rule and representative government there? And how about their unconscionable politicizing of Katrina? They are stuck on stupid.

Indeed, the real challenge for Democrats, politically, is whether they’ll be able to unstick themselves from stupid as we approach the 2008 elections -- not to mention 2006. Are they capable of thinking clearly again? Can they offer alternative solutions to the nation’s problems, beyond carping at President Bush -- who won’t be running -- and tearing down Republican ideas?

One great irony is that Hillary Clinton figured this out a long time ago. She realized that she needed to rise above this pettiness and demonstrate an appreciation for the global evil we face in the War on Terror, among other things. But just when she had almost succeeded at extricating herself -- opportunistically -- from the Democrat "stupid" quagmire, she was jerked right back into it by the formidably powerful crazies that dominate the party today. Hillary just got trounced in an unofficial poll among the far-left kooks -- hundreds of thousands of them -- and she’s understandably nervous. Properly chastened, she’s started hurling obligatory invectives at President Bush again.

Which is good, because the more she does that, the harder it will be to convince independents she is a moderate.

If Republicans weren’t stuck on stupid as well -- in an entirely different way -- they would have nothing to fear from Democrats in 2008, notwithstanding the enormity of the problems we now face, foreign and domestic. But Republicans just don’t seem to know how to be consistently true to the principles they champion. Though a majority of the country probably leans conservative, the GOP is still scared to death to govern that way.

President Bush should ignore the polls and the conventional wisdom that he has lost too much political capital to implement his agenda. He must abandon all fantasies of placating the implacable Left. He should appoint a conspicuously conservative originalist, like Janice Rogers Brown, to replace Justice O’Conner, then proceed to make his income tax cuts permanent, eliminate the estate tax, reform Social Security, reform immigration, cut pork and continue building up Iraqi forces -- and let the other guys stick on stupid.

I agree completely.