Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The desperate efforts to rebrand the GOP continue apace. Blue Texan's discovered yet another group:

Politico:

Republicans looking to recover from Bush-era defeats are turning to an unlikely source for advice: top aides to former President George W. Bush.

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino, former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie and former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto are among those set to provide words of wisdom to House Republican press secretaries at their annual workshop this Friday.

[snip]

Seriously, the answer to the question of what's next for the GOP is ... Pig Missile?

Anyway, here are the ideas that will form the basis of the New Republicanism.

Resurgent Republic will promote market-oriented policies, lower taxes and economic growth, and strong national security policies.

It's really a sickness, isn't it?

It truly is. Nothing else but something pathological explains why they keep drinking from the same tainted well. Steve Benen's incredulous:

Seriously? The House GOP conference, struggling to get back on track and suffering with the consequences of recent Republican failures, are turning to veterans of the Bush White House to help shape their communications strategy?

Not only that, but their answer to absolutely everything is tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Still.

When they try to venture away from shouting the tax cut mantra, the results aren't pretty:

On Saturday, Republican Party leaders Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Jeb Bush, and Mitt Romney participated in a pizza parlor town hall in Arlington, VA to launch the National Council for a New America. The Council, an effort to rebrand and revive the GOP, was established by Cantor to “duel with the Obama administration in policy areas” where Republicans have a “track record.”

After almost 40 minutes of speeches, including several reminders that Republicans should not be “nostalgic about the past,” the speakers opened up to questions from the audience. Ed McKee, the owner of the pizza parlor, asked what Republicans would do to reform health care, citing his own business’ struggle to deal with “health insurance rates,” which recently “went up 34%.”

[snip]

Responding to McKee’s question concerning the dramatic health care cost hike, Cantor said “that should be a sure sign we ought to be promoting anything that can try to bring health care costs down.” But rather than offering any ideas or policy plans for addressing health care costs, Cantor launched into a set of attacks on the health systems in the UK and Canada, saying any reform should not reflect a “government takeover.” The National Council’s policy paper on health care is similarly vague and lacks a single policy plan.

They don't have policy ideas. They have talking points. Old, tired, shopworn, and utterly fucking useless talking points.

All except for Jeb Bush, who actually floated something resembling a useful idea:

But Slate's Christopher Beam noted that there was at least one vaguely new idea.

The most original ideas came from perhaps the most establishment person in the room: Jeb Bush. When someone asked about how to make college affordable, Bush proposed incentivizing tuition by charging different amounts for different degrees. "We need nurses, scientists, engineers, qualified teachers.... If the government is going to subsidize at the fed level, there needs to be strategic nature to it," he said.

As Republican ideas go, this is at least a little different. As the former Florida governor sees it, America needs more nurses and engineers, so it's not unreasonable to think universities should charge lower tuition rates to those who major in those fields. Why should philosophy and poli sci majors pay the same tuition rates as nursing students, Jeb asks, if the country needs more of the latter than the prior?

The reason I found this interesting is that it doesn't sound like an especially conservative idea. In fact, it sounds like social engineering -- the government wants to encourage people to do certain things, so it's using the power of the state to reward those who are willing to work in the government-approved fields.

I'm accepting bets on how long it takes before the Con outcry starts and he's forced to strangle this poor newborn idea in its crib. My money's on tomorrow at the latest.

Maybe we should also bet on whether Neal "My First Girlfriend Was a Mule" Horsley gets embraced by the rabid right base:

He is now running for governor in Georgia as a Republican and says that he'd kill his own son for liberty. I'm not kidding you.

A longshot Georgia candidate for governor who’s already admitted having sex with a mule before finding God says he’s ready to sacrifice his own son in an effort to get his state to secede from the union.

Neal Horsley made national headlines when he posted the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors online. His “Nuremberg Files” website also crossed off the names of doctors as they were killed.

Now he’s ready to make new news. In an interview by Dylan Otto Krider published late Wednesday, he indicated he’d kill his own son to dissolve the United States (in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade). Asked if he was ready to sacrifice his own son in a national insurrection, Horsley recounts a fight with his son where he almost killed him. “I was one foot from killing my own son, or hurting him really, really bad,” Horsley told Krider. “If he would have attacked me again, I would have stuck him. Or cut him or sliced him or done something to stop him. That’s the point, you hypothetical has literally already been worked out with me, and that’s what makes me different from the other candidates for Governor.

I don't think this is the type of candidate that Republicans intend to now fill their new "Big Tent" party with.

Oh, I dunno. He doesn't sound all that much more insane than their current heroes... the mule-fucking notwithstanding. After all, he's found Jesus since then.

Something tells me the GOP is in the deepest of deep shit. Call it a hunch.