DATELINE: Washington ... GOP says " We're here, and we're waiting."

This just in from the GOP Whip's Floor Assistant:

"As the high cost of gasoline continues to cripple the American family, Speaker Pelosi goes forth with her vital book tour (Amazon.com rank #1,431).

Meanwhile, House Republicans will take to the Floor at 10 am to call on the Speaker to convene the House for an up-or-down vote on the American Energy Act, which will increase the supply of American-made energy, improve conservation and efficiency, and promote new and expanding energy technologies to help lower the price at the pump and reduce America’s increasingly costly and dangerous dependence on foreign sources of energy. "

Republicans to America: We're here, we're waiting, we're ready to vote on real energy reform. Where are the Dems?

UPDATED 10:42AM from Whip's Floor Asst: "As Speaker Pelosi autographs copies of her book, our Republican Leader, Rep. Boehner, will take to the floor in 10 minutes to demand an up-or-down vote to increase American energy production."

"We must destroy this village in order to save it."

APPARENTLY, WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE'S FRAGGING OURSELVES.

I was going to write this piece about the fratricide taking place within the GOP here in the Hoosier state. While I was googling around doing some research I ran across this article from Brian Griffiths in Maryland.

If you read the first couple paragraphs and replace the references to Maryland, you could easily mistake it for Indianapolis. It's unfortunate that our once great GOP is pitting friends against friends, strong-arming colleagues, and shooting veiled threats at folks who we will ultimately need again for another battle.

Some wounds take a long time to heal.

I'm old enough to have vivid memories of Viet Nam. A place where the warrioirs won all the battles only to have the leadership lose the war. The parallels are not obscure to even the most casual observer.

If we're not careful we will lose the war in November. We will have certainly destroyed the village. Who will step up to end the folly?

When will Republicans start actually acting like Republicans?

Earlier this week our POTUS proffered a humongeousnessly huge Budget proposal for FY'09 which was preceeded by and insanely stupid "Stimulus Package" that will essentially give people who pay little or no taxes around 300 bucks a piece (+ another 300 for each rugrat, thankfully only up to four per household) so they can go buy that flat screen HDTV they missed at Christmas. (PS: Get it on sale at Best Buy and you'll have enough to get a case of $3 Buck Chuck at Trader Joe's too.)

Excuse me? Was I asleep when the GOP lost the message of 2006. I mean, I get the whole "American's have a short memory thing", really. But c'mon. What ever happened to Fiscal Responsibility, Personal Responsibility, Less Government (Intervention and Regulation, as well as size), a little Accountability maybe, and that famous Ronnie line about Government not being the solution to our problems, "Government is the Problem" ... Hello?

My friend and fellow conspirator, Kurt Luidhardt, made a real good point in a recent post on this page, quoting Ronnie:

"A political party cannot be all things to all people. It cannot be compromised to political expediency ..." which means, "If you don't stand for something ..." you'll end up looking just like the Democrats without all the Code Pink baggage. Not a real attractive position to be in.

Here's a thought. How about we just don't take the people's money from them in the first place. It saves us the cost and irratation of having to give it back to them later.

I usually don't wax so seriously on this stuff. After all, this blog is about having fun with politics. But for cryin' out loud, enough is enough. It gets harder and harder to flack for the GOP (even as a true believer) when you can just as easily flack for the other guys and have better campaign sex (not that I have any direct knowledge or experience in that regard, it's just what I've heard).

In the end, it's really all about the idea of thinking about the next generation and not the next election, which is what we used to do. It is about the GOP growing some stones and deciding that we gotta stand for something or we're most certainly going to fall for anything ... like Stimulus Packages that won't stimulate anything.

Does the thought of being in the Minority for another forty years do anything for ya?

Is a certain GOP committee staffer coming homeless?

Rumor has it that a certain former INDIANA GOP heavyweight who worked on the ill-fated Rudy campaign may come back to Indiana ... Stay tuned.