The Church Lady Party – John Tierney

NY Times columnist John Tierney writes today:

Back when Republicans didn’t control Washington, Jude Wanniski proposed the Two Santa Claus theory as a solution to their image problem. You can’t win elections by simply vowing to shrink government, he argued, because that just makes you look like the Grinch. To compete with Democrats promising benefits to everyone, you have to offer your own goodies in the form of tax cuts.   The Santa Claus strategy worked, and the Republicans’ reputation for generosity has only grown thanks to President Bush’s tax cuts and middle-class entitlements.

But now the party has another image problem.  Republicans are looking like moral Grinches — or, more precisely, the Church Lady, the scold who makes even fellow congregants roll their eyes.  They’re the party whose leader defends the sanctity of embyronic stem cells against scientists trying to cure diseases. They’re the killjoy who stands up to object when a gay couple wants to marry. They’re so shocked by gambling — imagine, Americans betting money! — that the House has just passed a bill outlawing most online wagering, and federal agents have arrested a visiting British executive of a sports-betting operation that is perfectly legal in his country.  [Paragraphing edited.]

And I read this morning that the Senate is taking up a bill to make it a federal crime to take a minor woman across a state line to get an abortion without parental knowledge.  As the father of a teen-aged daughter, I wholeheartedly agree that parents usually need to have a say, and arguably a decisive say, in how their minor daughters’ pregnancies are going to be handled.   But doesn’t the country have bigger issues to deal with than this, that would represent a better use of our senators’ time?

I’m a lifelong Republican, but I’m starting to think it might be time to let the GOP sit on the bench for a few years, to help them regain perspective.