Too Much Politics, Too Little Substance

From Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect:

Let’s stipulate at the outset that if the Republican Congress had done a decent job addressing the nation’s problems over the past two years, the Foley scandal and cover-up wouldn’t now be plunging the Republicans into political perdition. Instead, the scandal has served chiefly to crystallize in the public’s mind much that it has come to loathe about both the Congress and the Bush administration -- above all, their unwavering focus on the politics of a problem rather than the problem itself.

It’s not just that congressional Republicans have neglected to do anything about the conduct of the war in Iraq, or diminishing medical and retirement benefits, or the 12 million undocumented immigrants living and working here. It’s also that they’ve fabricated crises if the politics seemed propitious. (Remember Terry Schiavo?) Or they’ve concocted public problems in order to go after groups that pose political problems for them. So they’ve contended that trial lawyers, who are a major funding source for Democrats, are a major reason for the high cost of medicine (which they’re not) and sought to reduce jury awards by legislative fiat. Similarly, they periodically attack unions, the linchpin of the Democratic coalition, by pointing up the perils they pose -- some of them so dire they don’t, in fact, really exist.

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