I wonder what he means by mismanaged. I think we've mistakenly means-tested the best things out fo our agenda, leaving most Democrats even to say "Wait, I'm paying for this and getting nothing." I think Reich's post yesterday is a good example: the bailout and stimulus didn't reach ordinary people.

Whenever the right's in trouble they take it as an opportunity to be "more right." We can learn from this. Lets stop means testing the best ideas we have to offer.

Let's see now. After 8 years of GWB's misguided policies driving the country into the ground, in which we heard nary a peep out of Gingrich, now, less than a year into Obama's administration, in which, btw, Obama has had to spend an inordinate amount of time to try to mop up all the damage that GWB managed to do, Newt suddenly decides it's all over for the Dems?

I'd say Newt's got a bad case of wishful thinking...

Obama's and the Democrats' fortunes will rise and fall with the economy. Period. The fact that most people seem to think the economy is lousy, despite recent glimmers of hope, gives the right an opening. If the economy improves and adds jobs, then the right's opening will close.

Congressional Dems have shown a propensity to pander to the wingnuts in hopes of 'cover' but are getting an earful from their constituents! If the repubs had not fallen so low then Newt might have merit in his argument. As it stands there is little hope! The violence and distortion of the far right has proved to the World and America that they are no longer for the 'PEOPLE' but for corporations and power and should not be trusted!

Please read this: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/09/20099236251118653.html

The "opportunity" Gingrich describes was not created by any fumbles by President Obama or the Democratic Congress

Wrong.

Naturally when someone runs on a program of CHANGE and then doesn't follow up those words with actions, in other words when he takes a conservative path by continuing to sponsor bad people and bad policies both at home and abroad, he gives new life to those conservatives.

They are going nuts the same way they did when a moderate GOP nominee lost to Harry Truman in 1948.

That defeat caused the right to lose its mind at least as much as it has now. The 1948 nominee, liberal Republican Thomas Dewey, was immediately dumped as leader of the party and replaced by....Joe McCarthy.

McCarthy, a Republican backbencher of no particular ideology, decided to make the issue of Communists in government, in the classroom, in Hollywood, in the unions and, ultimately in the Pentagon, his issue. Before long he inflicted a reign of terror on the country.

===============================================

There you go torturing history again, MJ.

McCarthy was really never much a leader of the GOP - certainly not in 1948, which was when he was first elected to the Senate. In fact, he was an obscure back-bencher until his famous "Wheeling Speech" in 1950 started him on his anti-Red trajectory. Robert Taft really was the face of the party until it turned to Eisenhower in 1952. McCarthy had pretty much fizzled out after the famous Army hearings in 1954.

To say that the GOP "immediately" turned to McCarthy to lead it after the Dewey loss is a tremendous distortion.

Of course, maybe you'd like to talk about McCarthy's close ties to the Kennedy family

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, which had high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., himself a fervent anti-Communist, and was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. He dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice,[45][46] and was godfather to Robert F. Kennedy's first child, Kathleen Kennedy. Robert was chosen by McCarthy as a counsel for his investigatory committee. Joseph Kennedy had a national network of contacts and became a vocal supporter, building McCarthy's popularity among Catholics and making sizable contributions to McCarthy's campaigns.[47] The Kennedy patriarch hoped that one of his sons would be president. Mindful of the anti-Catholic prejudice Al Smith faced during his 1928 campaign for that office, Joseph Kennedy supported McCarthy as a national Catholic politician who might pave the way for a younger Kennedy's presidential candidacy.

Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy, who served in the Senate with McCarthy from 1953 until the latter's death in 1957, never attacked McCarthy. McCarthy had refused to campaign for Kennedy's 1952 opponent, Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., due to his friendship with the Kennedys.[48] Asked by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. why he avoided criticism of McCarthy, Kennedy said, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero."[49]

Wait till my Artist Blitzkrig on every TV station on every street corner and of course once a week on the public school station.
National Endowment for the Arts, and I won it, bought and paid for with tax payers dollars...
Oh yea, give me a fist bump Michelle !

The "right" did not lose its "moment" with the advent of Obama. The "right" of the French National Assembly lost as did the rest of the Assembly with advent of Napoleon.

If there was a "moment" when meaningful conservatism ended, it was when such conservatism was hijacked by arrogant chickenhawk windbags such as Gingrinch, whose "Republican Revolution" of the '90s is best remembered for closing all the Washington DC monuments out of pure pique, and forcing the US Congress to spend days discussing on global TV the sex life of Bill Clinton.

We, including MJ, need to stay focused not on tantrums, and not even -in this off-election years at least- on politics either: The country was raped, slashed and burned under the Cheney Administration. Never mind that most Democrats in Washington sat on their hands and watched while their spineless bodies quivered. The Democrats and Obama now need to get on with cleaning up the mess. Remind us of those who created the mess, and cheerled the raping and pillaging, but spare us their latter-day asinine trickster attempts to distract the country from that all-paramount reality.

Gingrich is just elevating his profile in case he decides to run in 2012. Nothing to see here. As usual, the combination of pandering to special interest donors (card check, individual mandate, 95% of the "stimulus" bill) and inability to agree on anything that the Democratic Party is known for is adding up to an inability to govern.

But that's nothing new, and certainly nothing new this month. Gingrich is a has been, which is unfortunate, since his time in the spotlight was the last time the Republican party had an attractive and centrist message.

I am not sure it pays to look at the wing-nut right today or "Tailgunner" Joe "back in the day".

Dewey lost to Truman, yes, but the GOP took the House and Senate, and they used their majorities very effectively (a) to intimidate Truman and (b) to recover control of military institutions -- including the defense budget -- that they had held since the Civil War but had lost exclusive control of to Roosevelt by 1940.

Using "starve the beast", "privatization", and "regulatory arbitrage" at the federal level, and all of the above plus revenue bonds, fusion centers, and indirect taxation at the state and local level, the GOP today is still making the sort of institutional changes that they want to see, having won the Great, World, and Cold Wars, single-handedly, in their own opinion.

They are unimpeded by a party of pacifist whiners and a President who -- like Lincoln -- is trying to avoid, rather than fight, a civil war.

The problem with Democrats today is that we are a collection of minorities and professional office-seekers.

We are not a governing party and our "cheap-seat" office-squatters do not want us to be a majority party. They and their "phony baloney jobs" would be at risk. All we know about governing today is collusive bargaining:

At the local level, this bargaining is between GOP land-speculators and Democratic slum-lords.

At the federal level the collusive bargaining is among Democrats, up and down a generational chain of ex-Democratic lobbyists, senior Democrats with safe seats, and junior Democrats who face either primary or general election opponents. So, the juniors look to the leadership or the lobbies -- bi-partisan concession-tenders -- for re-election. They do not have a real, much less a disciplined or responsible, party, and neither do Democratic voters.

So, they will have the choice in 2010 of voting for the GOP -- unlikely -- their own party -- increasingly unlikely -- or nobody at all -- increasingly likely.