The Twisted GOP Strategy For Relevance

As has been obvious for some time, the inmates are running the Republican asylum and have hit upon a devilishly clever escape plan: They'll oppose the Obama administration on everything it does.

This scorchiest of scorched earth strategies carries with it huge risks: It assumes that there are enough wingnut voters to join them in believing that Obama has a secret socialist agenda. It assumes that there still will be substantial vestiges of the Bush Recession come November 2010 and they can be blamed on Obama. It assumes that things will turn even worse in Afghanistan. And it assumes that opposing a major overhaul of the nation's dysfunctional health-care system that will reduce the number of uninsured and underinsured will somehow have appeal.

There is a word to describe this strategy at a time when so many Americans are frustrated and frightened: Twisted.

How else to described the fact that all but one Republican voted the other day against a bill reining in the multi-trillion dollar market for financial derivatives, a major culprit in the financial crash?