02-04-2017, 01:19 PM
Yes, a thoughtful first post, though I would remind everyone how quickly the political pendulum can swing. The Republicans were similarly demoralized after Obama's election in 2008 when he had a virtual supermajority in Congress to back his agenda.
Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the recent two-part Frontline series on PBS, "The Divided States of America."
NARRATOR: As the president celebrated, he had no idea that across town, new battle lines were being drawn. A group of Republicans quietly gathered to develop plans for taking on the new president.
ROBERT DRAPER, The New York Times Magazine: A meeting, a dinner, took place in a famous steakhouse in downtown Washington, with Newt Gingrich as sort of the emcee, as it were.
Rep. NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA), Fmr. Speaker of the House: The thing I found disturbing this week was the─
NARRATOR: At the gathering of top GOP luminaries─ conservative congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Senate power brokers Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn and event organizer Frank Luntz.
FRANK LUNTZ, Republican Pollster: The room was filled. It was a who’s who of ranking members who had at one point been committee chairmen, or in the majority, who now wondered out loud whether they were in the permanent minority.
ROBERT DRAPER: Many of them had attended Obama’s inauguration. They had seen that breath-taking spectacle of a million-and-a-half people on the Mall, and it felt like a wholesale repudiation of the Republican Party.
FRANK LUNTZ: They walked into that dining room as depressed as I’ve seen any elected members of Congress. They lost every Senate seat they could lose. They lost all these House seats. The numbers were so great that they thought that they weren’t coming back again, not for an election or two, but maybe a generation or two.
NARRATOR: They came and went. But as the night wore on, those who stayed began to talk about the future.
FRANK LUNTZ: Three hours, some of the brightest minds in the Republican Party debated how to be relevant.
NEWT GINGRICH: The point I made was that we had to be prepared, in the tradition of Wooden at UCLA, to run a full-court press. And we had to see how Obama behaved and to offer an alternative to what he wanted to do.
NARRATOR: The Republicans agreed on a tough new strategy, to block the president, fight his agenda.
NEWT GINGRICH: And he could be defeated partly by his own ideology and by his own behaviors.
FRANK LUNTZ: The feeling was that if that group could cooperate and if that group could lead, that the wilderness might not be a generation away.
NEWT GINGRICH: By the end of the evening, you began to reorient and realize, “Wait a second. You got Nancy Pelosi as an opponent. You got─ you know, you have a clear choice of ideologies. We have a tremendous amount of hard work to do, but it’s doable.”
ROBERT DRAPER: They all talked about this, and they began to get more and more optimistic, and they left feeling practically exuberant.
I would agree that, if the Democrats don't pick themselves off the mat and unite around an economic vision for working families, they best resign themselves to a long, dark [4T] winter.
By the way, when Trump has promised to "make America great again," can anyone tell me if he ever mentioned the "good ol' days" to which he was referring? The Eisenhower 50s? The Reagan 80s? I ask because the answer--if there is one--may tie in to a new book that's out now.
Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the recent two-part Frontline series on PBS, "The Divided States of America."
NARRATOR: As the president celebrated, he had no idea that across town, new battle lines were being drawn. A group of Republicans quietly gathered to develop plans for taking on the new president.
ROBERT DRAPER, The New York Times Magazine: A meeting, a dinner, took place in a famous steakhouse in downtown Washington, with Newt Gingrich as sort of the emcee, as it were.
Rep. NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA), Fmr. Speaker of the House: The thing I found disturbing this week was the─
NARRATOR: At the gathering of top GOP luminaries─ conservative congressmen Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Senate power brokers Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn and event organizer Frank Luntz.
FRANK LUNTZ, Republican Pollster: The room was filled. It was a who’s who of ranking members who had at one point been committee chairmen, or in the majority, who now wondered out loud whether they were in the permanent minority.
ROBERT DRAPER: Many of them had attended Obama’s inauguration. They had seen that breath-taking spectacle of a million-and-a-half people on the Mall, and it felt like a wholesale repudiation of the Republican Party.
FRANK LUNTZ: They walked into that dining room as depressed as I’ve seen any elected members of Congress. They lost every Senate seat they could lose. They lost all these House seats. The numbers were so great that they thought that they weren’t coming back again, not for an election or two, but maybe a generation or two.
NARRATOR: They came and went. But as the night wore on, those who stayed began to talk about the future.
FRANK LUNTZ: Three hours, some of the brightest minds in the Republican Party debated how to be relevant.
NEWT GINGRICH: The point I made was that we had to be prepared, in the tradition of Wooden at UCLA, to run a full-court press. And we had to see how Obama behaved and to offer an alternative to what he wanted to do.
NARRATOR: The Republicans agreed on a tough new strategy, to block the president, fight his agenda.
NEWT GINGRICH: And he could be defeated partly by his own ideology and by his own behaviors.
FRANK LUNTZ: The feeling was that if that group could cooperate and if that group could lead, that the wilderness might not be a generation away.
NEWT GINGRICH: By the end of the evening, you began to reorient and realize, “Wait a second. You got Nancy Pelosi as an opponent. You got─ you know, you have a clear choice of ideologies. We have a tremendous amount of hard work to do, but it’s doable.”
ROBERT DRAPER: They all talked about this, and they began to get more and more optimistic, and they left feeling practically exuberant.
I would agree that, if the Democrats don't pick themselves off the mat and unite around an economic vision for working families, they best resign themselves to a long, dark [4T] winter.
By the way, when Trump has promised to "make America great again," can anyone tell me if he ever mentioned the "good ol' days" to which he was referring? The Eisenhower 50s? The Reagan 80s? I ask because the answer--if there is one--may tie in to a new book that's out now.