{"id":9838,"date":"2007-02-05T16:07:27","date_gmt":"2007-02-05T21:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9838.html"},"modified":"2007-02-05T16:07:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-05T21:07:27","slug":"they-stole-our-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/they-stole-our-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"‘They stole our ideas’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Scott Garrett’s (R-N.J.) office, hoping to get a better sense of the House GOP caucus’ mood and perspective, conducted a wide-ranging, seven-page survey last month, the results of which were presented at the annual GOP retreat last week. Roll Call obtained a copy<\/a> of the original survey, which ended up shedding some interesting light on congressional Republicans’ capacity for self-pity.<\/p>\n

When asked what Democrats were credited for doing right, [Chief of Staff Michelle Presson] said, “They stole our ideas, they ran as Republicans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, the November elections have come and gone; lawmakers are focused almost exclusively on legislating at this point; and there’s no real need to re-litigate why Republicans got trounced. But to insist that Dems “stole” GOP ideas, and that somehow Dems “ran as Republicans,” suggests the GOP caucus really didn’t learn much from their embarrassing campaign cycle.<\/p>\n

Which ideas, exactly, did Democrats “steal”? The minimum wage increase? Funding for stem-cell research? Cutting interest rates for student loans? Opposing the war in Iraq? If these were<\/em> Republican ideas, Dems might have had some trouble in 2006. Fortunately, the GOP went into the cycle without any ideas for Dems to steal in the first place.<\/p>\n

As for Dems running as Republicans, Presson should probably feel a little embarrassed by such transparent nonsense. For the better part of 2006, the GOP insisted that Dems were running crazed, radical leftists who’d destroy America. Now, in retrospect, those same militant libs were successful because voters thought they were Republicans?<\/p>\n

Frankly, this was all thoroughly debunked months ago. The vast majority<\/a> of House Democratic nominees were pro-choice progressives running on anti-war, anti-Bush themes. They won — and in the first time in the modern era, Republicans didn’t beat a single Democratic incumbent in any congressional race anywhere.<\/p>\n

Scott Garrett’s intra-party poll found that 80% of House Republicans believe the party can retake the majority in 2008. I’m skeptical of that, but if they’re going to give it a shot, they’re going to have to stop whining and start facing reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Scott Garrett’s (R-N.J.) office, hoping to get a better sense of the House GOP caucus’ mood and perspective, conducted a wide-ranging, seven-page survey last month, the results of which were presented at the annual GOP retreat last week. Roll Call obtained a copy of the original survey, which ended up shedding some interesting light […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}