Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Who's the leader...

...of today's Republican Party? Mitch McConnell? John Boehner? Ezra Klein argues in a blog post, "The reverse-Obamaization of the Republican Party," that it could very well be ... President Obama (my emphasis):

Much as the Democratic Party is now defined by Obama’s agenda, the Republican Party is now defined by opposition to his agenda. That must be a real bummer for the GOP senators who entered public life to actually do things.

The Democratic Party, at the very least, chose Obama and has real influence over his agenda. The Republican Party didn’t choose Obama and has little influence over his agenda, but their platform is, if anything, even more dependent on Obama than the Democratic Party’s. There are plenty of Democrats who disagree with health-care reform because they think it’s too far left and plenty who disagree with it because they think it’s too far right and they all get to speak their mind. But Republicans who once loved the Obama/Romney model — and this includes Mitt Romney — now have to pretend they hate it, and since they haven’t had time to come up with alternatives, they’ve got no health-care policy at all. I can’t imagine that’s very fun for politicians who built their self-image around problem-solving and big ideas.

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