Just Let Them Do It

by: Chris Bowers

Mon Jul 21, 2008 at 16:41

We should cave on all of these issues, but do so with an important, public caveat. We should state, as loudly as possible, that none of this will actually lower gas prices, but that they only way to prove to the American people that it won't lower gas prices is to let Republicans have their way. Say that Republicans are good at selling things, but their ideas such don't' work.

Let's face it: the best political strategy Democrats have had over the past eight years is to make sure that there were always enough Democrats to capitulate with the governing conservative and (typically) Republican coalition, but not enough to make it a majority of the Democratic Party. This way, heinous Republican policies that benefit large corporations and cronies, but hurt most people, are passed into law, while most of the Democratic Party can claim they opposed such policies. The end result is that people stop believing Republicans, and start believing that Democrats were right all along when they said Republicans would be terrible if they were ever given control of the federal government.

Democrats are only moving toward power nationwide because Republicans were finally given sweeping trifecta control of D.C. this past decade, and quite predictably made things a lot worse for the country. It was actually Republican competence at passing their desired legislation that finally did Republicans in as a political force for the next several years.

If we can only prove them wrong but letting their idiotic ideas pass, then let this one pass immediately, and prove to people that it won't work before the election. Then, once the election is over, we can revoke all of the idiotic ideas, hopefully with comparatively less damage done than in, say, Iraq.

The consequences of Republican legislation is the most effective political tool Democrats have developed in decades. I say, not entirely sarcastically, that we go for it one more time.