the republican strategy of opposing everything that obama does doesn't seem to be working. it's still early, of course, but marching in lock step in opposition to a popular president with popular proposals while presenting no coherent program of your own seems like madness to me. but that's just how the modern republican party works. the pragmatists have mostly left the party, leaving just the ideologues. blind adherence to ideological positions in the fact of an economic crisis like this looks like political suicide. but frankly, given who makes up the remainder of the party, i guess they don't have any choice.
but on the plus side for the elephants is our two party system. with only two parties, each gets defined in opposition to the other. eventually, obama and/or the democrats will make some major blunder or otherwise get the american people to sour on them. when that happens, the republicans will rise again, just by virtue of being the not-democrats. it doesn't really matter how discredited their policies are. if the other side screws up, whatever they push will get recredited. that's how the american political system works. the only real question is whether the GOP can maintain ideological purity long enough for the next upswing in their fortunes. there's going to be a lot of pressure in the meantime for individual republicans to break ranks. at least there will be if these poll numbers continue to hold up.
