Open Thread: Monday 19th November 2007

Kos at Daily Kos highlights his own opinion piece that is going to appear in the printed edition of Newsweek, the first article from him to do so. There are two sections of that opinion article that are particularly salient.

"...In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." While the quip has provided Republicans with a cheap slogan for two decades, the philosophy behind it is beginning to box them in. If they govern effectively, they invalidate their own antigovernment ideology. And when you elect people who believe that government won't work, you shouldn't be surprised when government stops working."

This is not only very true, but has been a Republican mantra for much longer than Kos suggests, even going back to the second world war.

The second section is right at the end of the article...

"...Democrats should and will use Bush and his destructive policies on the campaign trail as the primary example of what happens when people who hate government are elected to run it. The message will be that Bush isn't a historical anomaly: he's the embodiment of modern conservatism.

If Americans want willfully ineffective government, they'll have a Republican Party desperate for their votes. But with 70 percent of the American people thinking the nation is on the wrong track, it's clear they expect the opposite. As long as Democrats make that contrast clear—and Bush's record will be integral to that argument—they should be headed for victory in 2008."

The trouble is the current Democratic Congress is finding it tough coping with a Bush administration that is failing to see sense, and a Republican minority who is backing him all the way. Certainly effective government is not the current order of business, as Bob Schieffer pointed out on Face The Nation. This current state of affairswill undoubtedly make the election of a Democratic president, any Democratic president, a much tougher task.

Over to you, what do you think?