They Are Right Wing Whack Jobs

In the wake of Rudy Giuliani's bald-face lying this morning on Good Morning America that "we had no domestic attacks under [George W.] Bush while [there was] one under Obama," and in the wake of GMA host George Stephanopolous's admission that he made a mistake in not pressing Giuliani on this point, comes this ridiculous piece of excrement from Peggy Noonan about President Obama's first year:

It was not worth it—not worth the town-hall uprisings and the bleeding of centrist support, not worth the rebranding of the president from center-left leader to leftist leader, not worth the proof it provided that the public's concerns and the administration's are not the same, not worth a wasted first year that should have been given to two things and two things only: economic matters and national security.... [Obama] had frittered his attention on issues that were secondary and tertiary—climate change, health care—while al Qaeda moved, and the system stuttered.

Andrew Sullivan smacks her down here. Money quote:

Noonan's column is a fantasy, a dream, a weird incantation of a thesis that is merely how she feels, without any substantive relationship to reality. Well, at least she understand[s] that the GOP is offering nothing - nothing - substantive as an alternative except oil drilling and torture and more bellicose rhetoric toward the rest of the world because that worked out so well under Bush.

Andrew is acknowledging Noonan's warning to the Republican party to stand for something, but she's not particularly optimistic:

I spoke a few weeks ago with a respected Republican congressman who told me with some excitement of a bill he's put forward to address the growth of entitlements and long-term government spending. We only have three or four years to get it right, he said. He made a strong case. I asked if his party was doing anything to get behind the bill, and he got the blanched look people get when they're trying to keep their faces from betraying anything. Not really, he said. Then he shrugged. "They're waiting for the Democrats to destroy themselves."

Noonan is wise to be pessimistic. By simply waiting for Dems to implode, the GOP turn a deaf ear even to their own fanatical base, who want something done NOW. They are even fielding primary candidates who espouse ideological purity. Candidates have to issue public statements that "every word" of the bible is literally true. Incumbents cannot be seen as having any tolerance or support for anything Obama is doing, even though they are privately saying he's doing the right thing. Noonan is clearly on record as having nothing good to say about the current leader of the GOP, Sarah Palin, so even more than being pessimistic, she is more than likely feeling terrified that not only will the GOP not regain the majority in either house of Congress, those who do ascend to Congress will be more polarizing and more paralyzing, and will turn the legislative branch into an even bigger circus than it already is.