April 15, 2009 02:56 AM UTC

It's The Hyperbole, Stupid

• 8 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve been talking about this for years, coincident with the Republican Party’s massive losing streak that began in 2004 in our state, and continues to this very day as Republicans in the Colorado Assembly continue to offer up laughable, over the top, relentless objections to…well, basically everything. And keep losing.

Expressed no better (that we’ve seen, anyway) than by CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger earlier today, exploring GOP responses to the Somali piracy incident:

But what about the style of say, Newt Gingrich? The former House Speaker — often mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2012 — decided to Twitter his inner thoughts on the pirates in real-time.

Last Saturday: “Obama is making a major mistake in not forcefully outlining the rules of civilization for dealing with pirates. We look weak.”

By Monday, after the safe rescue of the captain, Gingrich was, er, a tad more laudatory: “The Navy seals did exactly the right thing in rescuing the American captain. President Obama did the right thing in allowing the Navy to act.”

A grudging kudo, if there ever was one…

Here’s the problem: If Republicans can’t allow that the president did his job well in this unambiguous case, why should we believe their complaints about anything else? If they can’t pat him on the back for this one, why should we even listen to their arguments about the budget, about health care, about energy?

If Republicans want Americans to see their arguments as credible — as they may well be — they need to present themselves as the credible opposition.

Good first impressions count for them, too. And so far, Republicans are Twittering them away.

This is the same thing that happens when Sen. Mike Kopp compares the Pinnacol funds bills to Hitler, Stalin, and Hugo Chavez, when Josh Penry directs people to statistics that prove he’s making stuff up, or is just complete whole cloth bullshit that a reporter can deconstruct in five minutes. And don’t even get us started about Dave Schultheis wishing AIDS on babies.

They stop taking you seriously, and you start losing. At the Capitol, at the polls.

We’ll draw the usual allegations of partisanship over this observation, but the fact is that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are no gremlins spontaneously taking over these people’s mouths and making them spew dishonest nonsense (sometimes trending toward honest-to-God lunacy) where reasoned debate is called for. And it hasn’t always been this way, either–there have always been a smattering of nutjobs on both sides, but not this prominently factored (or so lopsided on one side of the aisle) in our recollection. How was this red state lost so completely, you ask?

We’ve been saying it for years and years now to apparently no effect. And as much as everybody wants to root for the scrappy underdog, especially in a place where Republicans could win with a more intellectually honest, moderate approach…they’re blowing it again, folks.