"Do it our way or be stampeded"

The Republican National Committee will be meeting this weekend to choose a new chairman. Will that choice be a clue as to which direction the floundering party will be going in the coming years? Or will their identity confusion make this just another internal brawl as they try to sort out their minority status?

Or is it perhaps not identity confusion, but simply a question of who is giving the marching orders to the loyal troops? Events of yesterday suggest it may be the latter and that Rush Limbaugh is the drill sergeant.

As Jay Bookman notes in the AJC today, Rush had famously "expressed hope that Barack Obama fails as president and he has insisted that congressional Republicans refuse to compromise with the president." Isn't that exactly what House Republicans did yesterday in voting in lock-step against the stimulus/recovery bill?

Georgia Congressman Phil Gingery first was critical of Rush's comments, saying it's easy for talk show hosts to stand back and throw bricks but "our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach."

Turns out that at least Boehner's "right approach" was exactly what Rush was pushing. So Gingery, ever the sychophant, fell all over himself apologizing to Rush and praising him, along with Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich, as "the voices of the conservative movement's conscience."

Ha!! Let them flounder and flip flop. My favorite political cartoonist, Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, captured it perfectly today. His drawing shows a very tall, resolute and serious looking Obama towering over and looking down at three very small, woeful looking elephants clustered together. The caption over the elephants' heads reads: "Do it our way or be stampeded . . . "

There is no question that the Repubs denied Obama his hoped for bipartisan endorsement yesterday. But there is also no question that the bill passed anyway by a very comfortable margin.

Stampede . . . schmampede. Ha!!

Ralph