Not Much There There

The Republican party hopefuls gathered in Iowa for a debate on ABC on Sunday. If you watched it -- and I was able to catch most of it -- then you can be forgiven if you thought you were watching a re-run from 1980 or so.

It's apparent that the only thing that unites these men is that they're all deathly afraid of being seen as soft or willing to compromise on anything. Iraq, immigration, health care, gay rights; none of them would yield to the possibility that there was any room to maneuver away from the right-wing orthodoxy that has ruled the party for a generation, and those who dared offer "maverick" positions -- i.e. Sen. McCain and his heretical view that not all undocumented workers should be rounded up and deported -- are sucking wind in both fund-raising and polling. And, as Paul Krugman notes in his column, there's an amazing lack of substance to the plans that they do offer. There were a lot of platitudes and stern statements of firm resolve, but not much else. They don't have a lot to offer other than the same old stuff, so they make a lot of noise: "Hey, you lousy kids! Stay off my lawn!"

It's still early in the campaign season, but compared to some of the Democrats, the GOP has yet to offer a reason for the electorate to vote for them, as opposed to their united front of voting against someone else. They are all very adept at finding snotty things to say about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, but they are deathy afraid of being asked to provide a substantial answer about real issues such as health care. All they can come up with is that they don't want to see America fall into the abyss of "socialized medicine" like Britain and Canada. Most of them were against the renewal of the SCHIP program apparently because they would rather see poor kids suffer and die than admit that there's a government program that actually does things right. Here's a news flash: we've had a form of socialized medicine for over forty years now. It's called Medicare, and the cost of Medicare is a lot less than that of private health care. But don't expect to hear that from the GOP candidates.

It must be horrifying to these guys to know that they are really running uphill against the landslide coming at them. According to a poll released on NBC, the American electorate gives the Democrats double-digit leads in every category of concern, including education, health care, the economy, trade, immigration, the military, and just about every other area. The Republicans know this. They also know that President Bush is a huge liability to their chances, and they're doing everything they can to run away from him, from Mitt Romney declaring that he's not a "carbon copy" of George W. Bush -- assuming anyone nowadays knows what a "carbon copy" is -- to dissing Vice President Cheney and saying that they would choose a veep who knows who the real president is.

To be fair, the Democrats, with the exception of John Edwards, have yet to really get much substance out there themselves in terms of universal health care, for instance. As Mr. Krugman notes, even Hillary Clinton is vague on her plans for universal health care. That might have something to do with the fact that her first attempt at putting together a plan when she was the First Lady went over like a lead enema, thanks to the scare tactics of the health care industrial complex lead by those beacons of medical capitalism, Harry and Louise. But at least the Democrats are talking about what they would do instead of demonizing their Republican opponents. They seem to be doing a pretty good job of that all on their own.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.