Weiner’s rant on the lost old party

As I watched New York’s Congressman Anthony Weiner dig into the congressional Republicans for deciding to hold a vote on defunding National Public Radio, his sarcasm and snark temporarily turning C-SPAN into a made-for-broadcast segment of the Daily Show, I began to wonder: What do Republicans really stand for these days?

I know Weiner ripped Republicans for voting to defund NPR a couple weeks ago. I was planning on writing a column about it then, but I thought instead I’ll wait for some snippy response to Weiner from someone on the right.

I waited, and I waited.

But I got so bored watching Paul Ryan, R-Wis., try to figure out how many nickels it would take to close the budget deficit that I realized Republicans are sort of like that substitute teacher you had in high school. The one who got called in at the last minute, and the normal teacher didn’t even have the courtesy to leave a lesson plan.

On the floor of the House, Weiner declared Americans aren’t really worried about the economy. Instead he said, “They’re staring at their radio station saying, ‘Get rid of Click and Clack.’”

“Kudos to you my friends,” he said to the Republicans, as finally, they had acted to remove that dangerous demagoguery from the airwaves. At first glance, someone could argue that while spending time on defunding NPR may seem a little childish, both sides have their pet issues. So what’s different about this?

Republicans weren’t just going about their normal congressional business. They had called an emergency congressional session just so that they could defund NPR.

An emergency session? They didn’t even call an emergency session when we started bombing Libya.

Directionless, congressional Republicans are, as I predicted two months ago, already beginning to splinter. The Republican Party was lacking cohesion and leadership far before the Tea Party wave of 2010, and their new populist base has only further fractured the lost party.

If the best the Republican Party can come up with is pulling the cord on one of the nation’s best news services at a time when good news services are few and far between, they’re going to have a harder and harder time convincing Americans that they have the ideas we need to dodge our longer-term problems.

As much as they’d like to, Republicans cannot defund climate change. And while cutting services for the poor and taxes for the rich may benefit the people holding fundraisers for them, Republicans will soon be unable to avoid the other elephant in the room: income inequality.

They may have ridden a Tea Party wave to victory in 2010, but their momentum has already fizzled out. The Republican Party has no master plan for the United States other than cut, cut, cut programs and taxes. The Grand Old Party used to care about doing things; now all they care about is obstructing things.

That’s one way to ensure temporary victories, but the Right will discover very quickly that years of tearing down minority groups and institutions does not build effective coalitions.

Let’s hope that they discover it soon.

Because call me a communist, but I love National Public Radio.

­— cdbabcoc@indiana.edu