An 'authentic GOP': bamboozling swing voters, as always

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"President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Washington have rebranded themselves as the party of economic irresponsibility."

Thus wrote, in a ruthless affront to recent history, Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.

It came in the third paragraph of a rather compressed, possibly hurried, five-paragraphs-long NY Times op-ed this Thursday morning, in which the author was celebrating this week's birth of a "New Republican Party," in venues such as Virginia. How did Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell do it? How did he pull it off in the wake of a massively Democratic 2008 and the state's previously rapid purpling?

Well, wrote Alex, being the principled mensch that he is, Republican Bob didn't "moderate," which of course he did. "Instead," continued Alex, he enhanced his old-time Republicanism "with an optimistic, populist vision of economic success.

"Mr. McDonnell offered suburban voters, working women and independents a better way to increase jobs and expand the economy, from the bottom up," wrote Castellanos. "It was a stark contrast to what Americans are seeing in Washington, where elitist Democratic politicians, in bed with the Wall Street establishment, are taking Americans' tax dollars away to invest in arrogant, top-down public-sector schemes." You get the drift.

Bundling and then confronting Alex's bombastic rubbish all at once -- the insulting revisionism, the gross distortions, the utterly Orwellian Newspeak and borderline-sociopathic shamelessness -- is almost physically harmful, like college-dorm binge-drinking. It leaves one badly disoriented and nearly breathless, but also laughing hysterically.

After eight years of a Republican president's fiscal madness -- six years of which received a GOP Congress' stamp of unquestioning approval -- it's the Democrats, says Castellanos, who are the party of "economic irresponsibility." Forget that they're having to cope with the consequences of a chronically gutted revenue base and an unprovoked war and an unfunded entitlement and soaring, inherited deficits on the heels of debt-reducing, presidentially Democratic surpluses.

Forget that Republicans raided the public treasury, coddled plutocrats, ignored the working class, exacerbated our health-care system's collapse, abused science and scientists, corrupted justice, violated international treaties with abandon and in general brought this nation perilously close to the brink of irreversible desolation. In fact, they may have accomplished just that. The coming years will tell.

At any rate, just forget all that. Because, you see, Republicans are now bringing us -- and by the way, there's nothing new about this; they've done it time and time and time again since the early 1960s -- "an optimistic, populist vision of economic success."

Yes, they're the happy, Everyman warriors, fighting for suburbanites, women, and above all, of course, independents of every age and every income and every geographic locale.

They have nothing but contempt for Washington, Wall Street and political elitism, and nothing but scorn for "arrogant" -- whatever that means -- "top-down public-sector schemes"; you know, the ones keeping their unemployment extravaganza just below Great Depression levels.

What did Castellanos title his piece in the Times? "Finally, an Authentic GOP." Two qualifiers too many.

But that's not the problem. Not for Democrats. The problem is, Castellanos had one thing right: independents are, once again, buying Republicans' bamboozlement. And the horrifically atomized Democratic Party is, once again, kissing its majoritarian future goodbye.

There is, of course, an even deeper problem: one of a central contradiction. (Most) Democrats know they must spend more money to create jobs, but they're also acutely wary of aggravating the (Republican) deficit and thereby further alienating deficit-conscious independents.

But something is going to have to give: the contradiction's imbalances cannot be reconciled. Democrats are going to have to take the plunge on a jobs program, and hope that independents are forgiving -- which, I think, they will be, if they're also working.

In short, a Grand Bargain must be struck internally -- progressive Democrats must give and take, as must Democratic conservatives.

What would such a bargain look like? How about ...

Urban progressives will hand to rural conservatives those justifiably hated, big-city Wall Street financiers on a populistic, too-big-to-tolerate platter and call for a temporary halt to pushing for a public option in health-care legislation. In return, conservatives will agree to a $500 billion (or whatever) jobs program and (silently) pledge to support, in 2011, a genuine public option.

The elimination of the public option (which is going nowhere, anyway) would speed the completion of health-care legislation, which Democrats desperately need to complete, and a massive jobs program would demonstrate to independents that Democrats of all ideological stripes are profoundly serious about unemployment -- that joblessness is not an ideological plaything.

Would both sides be willing to accommodate this, or some similar, Grand Bargain? I haven't a clue. Let's remember that these are Democrats we're talking about. But one thing is strikingly clear: they're going to have to start working together, creatively, or Alex Castellanos' "Authentic GOP" could soon be known as the majority party.

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