The Republicans in the Era of Obama

So it seems the Republicans are now beating the Democrats in one of those generic (i.e., meaningless) Rasmussen polls. Huh. How about that? The Bible the President was sworn in on isn't even cool yet, and things are already trending to the Other Guys. The President has the lowest approval rating of any President in the last 40 years, except Clinton, at the proverbial "100 Days" mark and people are starting to look back to the opposition party they just got through tossing out of office. Wow. Short attention span much?

My first reaction is, "The Republicans? Are they even still around?" How many times are we going to play this stupid game? The Democrats spent decades running up spending and bloating the government, so we kick them out and vote in the Republicans, who will save us from the incompetent Democrats. The Republicans proceed to, er, run up spending and bloat the government, so we kick _them_ out and vote the Democrats back in, to save us from the corrupt Republicans. Oh, yeah, now we remember why we hated the Democrats. They're incompetent. Say... those Republicans are looking pretty good right now.

Does anyone else see a pattern here? It's the Battered Wife Syndrome. Conservatives keep going back to the Republicans based on the promise, true decades ago, but no longer, that they will help reform government and possibly rescue it from teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Then we get kicked in the nadgers. But we keep coming back, because, gosh!, where else are we going to go?

When will this country get a proper conservative, small-government, individual freedom/responsibility party, because I watched the Republicans from 2000 to 2006 and they certainly weren't that party? They essentially took a dive in 2008 by running yet another candidate whose heart wasn't in the race (shades of Bush 1 and Dole), and elected a total enabler for the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. Remind me again why they deserve anyone's support? Because they oppose the President's seemingly deliberate economic sabotage and surrender-monkey foreign policy? Sorry, that's not enough. Not nearly enough.

Right now, the Republicans track record is abysmal on almost every issue except National Security. There is no one at the national level that inspires any kind of confidence and support from the beleaguered true conservatives, who keep hanging in there, doing their jobs, obeying the law, raising moral families and being productive citizens. The few that were there have sold themselves out so thoroughly even True Believers have given up hope, seemingly being less capable of doublethink and more immune to self-deception than the Obama worshippers.

There are some good possibilities for the future from the state level, Governors Palin, Jindal, Perry and Sanford, but since the Chairman of the RNC apparently, like our President, was picked for his skin color as opposed to having anything to offer to the job, the Republican Party at the national level is, as far as I'm concerned, moribund. The Zombie Party won't save us from the Cult of Personality and its army of Useful Idiots. "Night of the Living Dead" didn't have so much aimless shambling around.

It's going to take a lot more than agreeing that Obama is bad for this country in order to save it.