Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Wednesday is a good day to abbreviate.

Thomas Frank:

It is possible, I suppose, that the pundits are right and the public didn't really mean it when it elected a liberal Democrat president and gave Democrats even larger majorities in both houses of Congress. Maybe America really wants the same nice, reassuring, centrist thing as always.

But it is also possible that, for once, the public weighed the big issues and gave a clear verdict on the great economic questions of the last few decades. It is likely that we really do want universal health care and some measure of wealth-spreading, and even would like to see it become easier to organize a union in the workplace, however misguided such ideas may seem to the nation's institutions of higher carping.

Thomas Friedman: So now all the lazy pundits are back to writing about the Clintons. How should we feel about that?

Maureen Dowd: If Hillary Clinton gets to be the Mistress of Foggy Bottom, my forlornness when I'm not writing about the Clintons would be alleviated.

David Broder: Not the Clintons!! Nooooo!!! Will no one rid me of this scourge?

Kathleen Parker (apostate):

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I'm bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Brendan Miniter (unrepentent): Forget the RINOs.

Maybe that's because Republicans have looked closely at the election results. The country hasn't so much moved left as it has abandoned a GOP that abandoned its own principles. In Ohio, Barack Obama actually won about 40,000 fewer votes than John Kerry did four years ago. Mr. Obama took Ohio only because John McCain pulled 350,000 fewer votes than George W. Bush did in 2004. Republicans and Republican-leaning voters stayed home.

That's not an endorsement of the ideas of the left. It's a lack enthusiasm for a party that failed to deliver the smaller government it promised in Washington. At least the GOP, in settling on future leaders like Governors Jindal, Sanford and Palin, seems to understand that.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

Michael Gerson: When it comes to complex economic issues, leave it to a Bush speech writer to explain why the GOP doesn't suck as much as it appears – and why in the end they'll do the right thing even though they don't want to.

See also  Kula2316's Morning Reaction.