Doing the math, Republican Virginia Foxx of North Carolina estimates that Democrats’ proposed economic stimulus package would spend $275,000 per job to create or save 3 million jobs.
NOT OFFENDED
Democrat Frank M. Kratovil is a freshman congressman from Maryland’s 1st District who defeated Republican Andy Harris in the primary, ousting incumbent Republican Wayne T. Gilchrest.
This week, Mr. Kratovil introduced himself as “a career prosecutor, a person whose job is to sort through the facts in search of the truth. Throughout my career, I have found that the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.”
WHERE NOW?
While President Obama and most Democrats continue to furnish their homes, Republicans begin the challenging task of rebuilding their party from the ground up. First, they will need a construction foreman.
Endorsements are being endorsed daily for six candidates running for chairman of the Republican National Committee, and the winner will be announced at the Republican Party’s winter meeting later this month. Hopes include:
Chip Saltsman, former head of the Tennessee Republican Party (recently found himself in heated water after distributing a Christmas CD containing a parody of David Ehrenstein’s “Barack the Magic Negro”).
Saul Anuzis, head of the Michigan Republican Party (the father of hockey and telecommunications company owner told Inside the Beltway his party needs a “tech-savvy” leader of his caliber).
Kenneth Blackwell (The former Ohio Secretary of State is backed by an influential group of Republican hardliners, including two-time presidential candidate Steve Forbes, former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, former Reagan adviser T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly and American Conservative Union President David Keene).
Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party (well known and respected, he is the fourth-serving chairman of the state Republican Party in the country and serves on the RNC Budget Committee).
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (his supporters are throwing a party in his honor Monday night at the Rookery on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest).
Incumbent RNC Chairman Mike Duncan (says he and the Republican Party shouldn’t be left out over the next four years, citing increased grassroots support and fundraising totaling more than $320 million in the last election campaign).
OLD QUESTIONS
Bestselling author and former Bush special assistant David Frum says Republicans can win the next election, but only if they make drastic, “personally uncomfortable” changes.
Otherwise, the party is “facing disaster in the face,” warns the Toronto-born fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, which has just reissued last year’s highly acclaimed “Comeback” with a up-to-date chapter containing lessons from the 2008 presidential campaign.
“While writing this book, I often joked that it should be called “Will You Listen to Me?” – with the idea that after 2008 we would release a paperback edition with the title: “OK – so will you listen now?” ”
Mr. Frum says Sen. John McCain can’t be blamed for the party’s dismal performance in November. It’s not about Iraq either. Instead, the current cohort of civic-minded twenty-somethings could be said to be “the most one-sided in polling history” and have reacted sharply to President Bush’s “frustrations and failures.”
Although the former president did accomplish “much more than he gets credit for,” Mr. Frum writes that Mr. Bush “deserves much of the blame”: appointing “consistently average people” to vital positions, defying the nation and his own party by passing an immigration amnesty as a top priority and spending money “generously” without improving government.
As for the Republican Party, he says, its “political ideas have barely changed at all from what they were in 1978. It’s like the punchline to the joke I quote in Comeback: ‘Son, your replies are so old that I forgot questions.” ”
NOTHING TOO REAL
“The simple fact that we have 58, 59 senators should in no way give us any idea that we can get by without bipartisan support.”
– This week’s warning to Democrats from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada
