Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Republican Party: Party of "No" or Party of "Zero"

GOP, Party, ZeroSince the sweeping Democratic victory, bipartisanship has been at an astonishing low. The Republican party is floundering without an identity and has increasingly become irrelevant. (Image: Wikipedia) The GOP has been extremely critical of the Obama budget plan. The budget, of course, runs up a deficit that was already brought to new depths by Bush. What critics fail to mention is the fact that the democratic budget cuts the annual deficit in half by the end of Obama's first term.

So, regardless of this often-overlooked point, what has the GOP done to improve the budget? Well, this should sound familiar: nothing. Instead of releasing an alternative budget, as is traditional for any opposition party in a democracy trying to prove it can run the country better, the Republican party released a budget that is no more than a manifesto of conservative ideals.

As it turns out, the GOP's budget has no numbers. Why would this be? Well, the GOP knows it would lose the ability to criticize the Obama budget if Americans saw the level of debt they would continue to run up. Here's an ad released by the Democratic National Committee on the Republican budget:



I think it's more appropriate to call the GOP the party of "Zero" instead of the party of "No" because that is the number of Republicans in support of financial recovery and this budget alike. That's the number of numbers in their budget. It's the number of leaders within the party. Most importantly, it seems to be the number of ideas they have on the future of America.