Republicans, sane and otherwise

Steven Perstein has a good column in today's Washington Post about two Repubs, Mitch McConnell of the US Senate and Mitch Daniels, gov. of Indiana.

Mitch no. 1

The bad Mitch, as most Americans know by now, is the charmless and shameless hypocrite who offers up a steady stream of stale ideology and snarky talking points but almost never a constructive idea. McConnell has decided that the only way for Republicans to win is for President Obama to lose, and he will use lies, threats and all manner of parliamentary subterfuge to obstruct the president's programs.

And Mich no. 2:

The good Mitch, by contrast, is a principled but practical conservative who respects the intelligence of voters and would rather get something done than score political points. Daniels is a genuine fiscal conservative who took a $600 million state budget deficit and turned it into a $1 billion surplus but managed to do so without cutting spending for education and even increased funding for child welfare services. He pushed hard to lower property taxes but didn't hesitate to propose temporary hikes in income and sales taxes to keep the state in the black. He privatized the state's toll road and then used the $4 billion proceeds to launch a major public works investment program.

Summing up:

In a prescient speech earlier this year in Washington, the governor of Indiana told a group of fellow conservatives that they could not regain the trust of the American people unless they accepted gracefully their new role as the loyal opposition and learned to root for the success of the country and its political institutions. The question now facing Republicans is whether they are willing to follow Indiana Mitch and become a vital and active part of the solution, or continue to follow Washington Mitch off the political cliff.

Read the whole piece. It is going to be a long slow slog for the 'good' Mitches of the party to recapture their own party. But, it could happen. And there is always David Frum, former pompous twit and now voice of reason.

change we can believe in.

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