Time to regroup

I was watching "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, as I am wont to do Sunday mornings. One of the guests this past week was Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. It struck me as remarkable that Sen. Coburn reiterated a position he made clear in his last election. On Sunday, he reaffirmed his belief that the "gay agenda" of legalizing same-sex marriage and homosexual adoption represented "the single greatest threat to America today."\nI was struck by that statement. "Surely he will refine it," I thought to myself. "Surely he doesn't mean to say that al-Qaida, an organization dedicated to blowing us up because of its vehement disagreement with us about foreign policy, is less of a threat than a bunch of dudes and chicks that want to marry each other? Surely he's not thinking that global warming, which is taken as fact now by the scientific community as a whole -- and threatens to make the recent flooding that happened in New Orleans look like a light drizzle in the next century or so -- is a more serious threat than a group of guys who want to be able to visit their ailing lovers in the hospital?" \nMy wife, ever snarky, responded, "Of course he's serious. Al-Qaida only wants to blow him up. 'The gays' want to do something that terrifies him much more."\nOf course, eventually I calmed down and remembered, "Oh yeah, this is Tom Coburn." This is the same Tom Coburn who criticized NBC for showing an unedited run of "Schindler's List" because he thought there was too much T&A in the movie. This is the same guy who claimed that silicone breast implants make women healthier. This is also the guy who claims that he can basically read people's minds through his training as a medical doctor. \nAs the Republican Party struggles with a public relations dilemma of mammoth proportions, why would the GOP allow such a controversial (and arguably "loony") member of its party to speak for it? Sen. Coburn is a lightning rod for partisan disdain from the left, just as President Clinton, Sen. Clinton or anyone with the last name of Kennedy is for those on the right. Why wouldn't the GOP encourage popular centrists, like the inestimable former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to step forward now and encourage the likes of Tom Coburn to bide their time until the Republican Party regains its footing?\nIn times of political crisis, such as the one the GOP currently finds itself in, maintaining Party unity is particularly difficult. We have already seen signs that all those Republicans who face re-election next year (save those that live in the reddest of the red states) intend to put as much distance between themselves and our highly unpopular president as they reasonably can. With 2,000-plus dead Americans sparking a strong call for withdrawal from Iraq, wide-spread corruption charges facing all levels of the Republican establishment and a growing disenchantment with GOP governance, the Party needs to take steps now to recover its standing with the public as a whole. \nOtherwise, Mr. Bush is going to find 2006 to be, for him, just like 1994 was for Mr. Clinton.