Republicans in the Wilderness?

It's amazing sometimes how really awful mainstream political reporting has become. I'm just now reading Time's cover story this week, "Republicans in Distress: Is the Party Over?", and the half-truths and distortions are literally breathtaking. Note this passage on the GOP as the "Party of No":

The Democratic critiques of the GOP — that it's the Party of No, or No Ideas — are not helpful either. It's silly to fault an opposition party for opposition; obstructionism helped return Democrats to power. Republicans actually have plenty of ideas.

That's the problem. The party's ideas — about economic issues, social issues and just about everything else — are not popular ideas. They are extremely conservative ideas tarred by association with the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, who helped downsize the party to its extremely conservative base. A hard-right agenda of slashing taxes for the investor class, protecting marriage from gays, blocking universal health insurance and extolling the glories of waterboarding produces terrific ratings for Rush Limbaugh, but it's not a majority agenda. The party's new, Hooverish focus on austerity on the brink of another depression does not seem to fit the national mood, and it's shamelessly hypocritical, given the party's recent history of massive deficit spending on pork, war and prescription drugs in good times, not to mention its continuing support for deficit-exploding tax cuts in bad times.

It's a simplistic slogan, the "Party of No," and the Democrats know it. But notice how Time's Michael Grunwald substantiaties the meme anyway.

No one is talking about tax cuts for the "investor class." Conservatives simply think taxes are too high already, and they don't believe President Obama at his word when he says taxes won't increase on those making less than $250,000. And on same-sex marriage, as I've demonstrated many times, "protecting marriage from gays" is in fact majority opinion, nationally and in Iowa in recent polls.

Not only that. No one is "blocking" universal health insurance. Current Democratic health care proposals don't even claim to guarantee universal insurance coverage. What leftist are actually promoting is an opt-out provision to shift consumers to a government-run health bureaucracy whose ulitimate goal is to destroy private health markets and transform American medicine into an inferior ration-plagued socialized medical regime. And on torture, as we all know, the Democrats are all about hypocrisy and witchunts, and majorities oppose torture trials against former Bush administration officials in any case.

And we're simply not "on the brink of another depression." God, the stupidity rankles! The Dems just want big government activism, damn the leading economic indicators! Recall my earlier post, "With Recession Easing, Obama Will Keep Spending Anyway."

But actually Grunwald does have a piont about the GOP's "recent history of massive deficit spending on pork, war and prescription drugs ..."

This is precisely why the Republican grassroots is fired up. The GOP has gone off the tracks and the right-wing base of the party wants a return to not only limited government, but good government. And don't forget, "Republicans did not lose the 2008 election because they were out of step ideologically with average Americans."

The "Republicans in the Wilderness" meme has emerged as the left's major media frame to cover for the genuine fear among progressives that their government mandate is miniscule and their electoral majority fragile. The Democratic-media is simply attempting to brainwash the public with the "GOP is in disarray" propaganda. Their hope is that this smokescreen will work like magic to mask the Obama administration's incompetence and overreach.

On a related note, Erick Florack cites American Power in his essay at Pajamas Media today, "Frustrated Conservative Base Itching to Take Off the Gloves." As Florack notes:

For eight years, every single time the Republicans made any kind of a move, it was reason enough for the Democrats to hold a press conference. They would scream and gnash their teeth over whatever the news of the day happened to be. In so doing, they managed to cast anything even remotely Republican to be bad or evil.

Well, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Related: For more examples of Democratic-media propaganda, see Dan Balz, "As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince," and also Memeorandum.