The Party of "No"

I've been thinking about this for a few days, and while over at Morgan's place I found a decent lead-in for the topic. 

... the question is not: Does this person make wise decisions? But instead: When this person makes stupid decisions, is there a huge following of people motivated to vote for, support, and show up at rallies to egg [him on]?

I was listening to Dennis Miller yesterday, and he was talking about California Congressman Brad Sherman's saying that they were working on a stimulus bill, but they're not supposed to call it a stimulus bill.  This made Dennis snicker.   Dennis figured he'd gacked it and was in for a Pelosi-whuppin', so he got him on the phone for an interview. 

To his credit, the Democrat meant it.  And it seems Nancy is no longer someone to fear.   Brad sounded serious and thoughtful... a serious and thoughtful believer in Keynsian economics, to be sure ... but he was definitely not being a blow-hard.

He did have some talking points, though, that we heard in the President's SOTU speech and beyond.  And the phrases he kept coming back to were, "required super-majority" resulting in "disfunctional government" and the "party of 'no'" .... "rejoicing in disfunctional government."

Now.... to my thoughts.

"Yes" and "No" are meaningless words without additional context.  They mean, and I cannot stress this enough, absolutely nothing.

So what does "the party of 'No'" mean?    Just as much as "No" means when extricated from the context in which "No" is spoken.

The context, of course, is -- what are they saying "no" to?

The answer that would come back from the Democrats would be "Everything."

But that's not really an answer, either.  Because what they really mean is "Everything we propose."  So my followup question would be "What are you proposing?"

I know, I know.  Logic has no place in politics.  But we were going for the "new" politics, I thought, leaving "the politics of the past" behind.  Right?

So let's consider the opposition party, if one were allowed, in Nazi Germany.

Hitler:  "Let's invade Poland!"
Other Party:  "No!"
Hitler: "Russia then?"
Other Party: "No!"
Hitler: "How about France?"
Other Party: "No!"
Hitler: "I don't suppose you'd be for annexing Austria?"
Other Party: "We love the Von Trapps.  Absolutely not!"
Hitler: "What say we round up all the Jews and kill 'em in awful, horrible ways?"
Other Party:  What, are you crazy?
Hilter:  "Racist!  You're only saying that because I don't have blonde hair and blue eyes!"
Other Party:  "No we're not, you're a loon!"
Hitler:  "That's all you say is 'No!'  You're just a bunch of negative obstructionists.  How can my government get anything done with you people around?

Point being is if all one party has is bad ideas, so bad that the other party can't even get behind a part of them, "No" is the right answer.   All of the Democrats ideas last year have been for massive spending of money we already have less than none of because we're running huge deficits, reversing War on Radical Islam policies that were advertised to be terrible ideas but as it turns out one by one were actually pretty well thought out given the available options, and hugely increasing the direct role of government in our economy and in our health care decisions.  If that's what they want to get done, then ... NO, we don't want any of it done.

The Dems could have passed thier Health Care bill without any Republican votes. But they didn't. And they didn't because since no Republicans (again, in the super-minority) wouldn't get on board so the Democrats knew it would be their bably and couldn't call it "bi-partisan". They knew what the political consequences would be in November.

The Dems had a fillibuster-proof majority and still didn't pass health care, Gitmo is still open, and now the New York Gitmo trials aren't going to be held in New York.   All those bloody New Yorkers voted for Obama presumably because Bush was handling all this stuff wrong, but when Obama tries to handle it "their" way, it's "Not in My Back Yard".  But it's all being blamed on "the [super-minority] Party of No!"

Well hell!  Is it now time to consider the tiniest remote possibility that Bush was not, in fact, a Constitution-Hating Moron bent on totalitarian Christian rule and just hated brown people -- but rather, was doing his job?

At least where the Islamist threat was concerned?