Heller explains why GOP would be better off without him and Ensign

One sure sign that the nation is locked in the grip of a slow news month is when the paper runs an interview with War Party Rep. Dean Heller that appears to have been saved up for a day when there wasn't enough crime and mayhem copy to fill the paper's local news section.

Arguably the most obscure and statistically among the least relevant of all the members of the U.S. Congress, Heller was no doubt delighted to receive a call from the working press in the first place, and used the rare moment as the subject of someone's attention to explain that the reason America hates Republicans so much is that Republicans aren't Republican enough.

"I'm of the position that we really need to clean house in this Republican Party, and I think the next couple of election cycles are going to do that," Heller said.

Republicans who should be swept out, in Heller's view, include some from the historic class of 1994, which gave the GOP a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.

"It's an old mantra: they came to change Washington, and Washington changed them," Heller said several weeks ago. "I think we got to the point where the majority of Republicans were trying to change America and tell (Americans) what they wanted instead of listening to ... what they need."

Although Heller did not mention his name, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., was one of 73 members of the GOP freshman class of 1994 in the House. Through a spokesman, Ensign declined to comment on Heller's statement. (RJ)

"Several weeks ago," eh? Actually, it makes perfect sense that an interview with Heller would exhibit such an impressive shelf-life -- anything the career politician says is unlikely to be any more or less consequential no matter when it is revealed to the public, and the importance, or lack thereof, of the cute blond's utterances certainly won't grow or diminish much over the course of a mere "several weeks."

But yes, Ensign is the nation's most out-of-touch senator and his complete and total submersion in the darkest and deepest crannies of a cloistered beltway subculture goes without saying. Still, it's nice to see Heller say it.

Meantime, what are we to make of the rest of Heller's sophisticated political analysis? (That analysis is shared of course by any number of Republicans, conservatives and their apologists nationwide who contend that the Republican Party's big problem is simply that it has "gotten off track" or somesuch; it's not like Heller thinks up this shit on his own.)

On the one hand, it sounds as if Heller is suggesting that...

• tax cuts for the wealthy and the world's largest corporations;
• regulatory neglect of the sort that allows coal miners to die, children to play with lead-tainted toys, the credit system to nearly collapse, etc.;
• rigidly knee-jerk conservative ideology blocking the development of pragmatic policies in the areas of energy, health care and economics;
• hating gays;
• hating civil liberties, and;
• disastrously arrogant military adventurism

...may have been things that Republicans in Washington wanted, but were not what Americans needed.

Then again, perhaps Heller was trying to explain that if Republicans continue to do just what they've been doing, except more of it, i.e., ...

• even more generous taxpayer-funded handouts to the wealthy;
• more dead miners, unsafe consumer products, teetering financial markets, etc.;
• wholesale, aggressive inaction on economic policy;
• stepped-up and uglier intolerance of law-abiding hard-working fellow Americans;
• increased assaults on individual freedoms and;
• as Heller's beloved War Party standard bearer -- who has been in Washington so long that it has changed him several times over --  puts it, "other wars, my friends ... other wars"

... Americans will love the War Party again just like they did after 9-11 when people liked Republicans so much they even said nice things about venal little ogres like Dolph JulieAnnie and, for a few minutes there and unimaginable as it retrospectively seems, Dick Cheney.

Either way, Heller and like-minded conservative extremists certainly are charting a provocative course, and hopefully they'll let us know how that works out for them.

There's just one niggling little hitch in Heller's otherwise insightful prognosis. Since getting in the game at the federal level, Heller has tacked hard, hard to the right, not so much to please the most hard core right-wingers in his own district (though their flavorful wingnuttery is frighteningly well-developed), but to assure that he will never be attacked from the right flank by a well-funded Washington conservative extremist insider special interest group called Club for Growth. In other words, Heller, once widely thought to be mostly sane, may have run for Congress to change Washington, but Washington most definitely has changed him.

And so to be on the safe side and by his own standard, any housecleaning in the Republican Party should probably include Dean Heller.

Comments

[Goldy]

Can we have a War on Hope? We can just pump it full of hot lead in a D.C. suburb by a gay, undocumented worker with an assult rifle purchased at a gun show with the proceeds of a sub prime home equity line. We can bury the body at nearby Arlington National Cemetary where we can also start drilling for oil, because its never to early to start drilling!!!

[happykid]

Wow, the GOP is so full of -- well, it's full of something, allright -- but hope and new ideas are sorely lacking.
Pathetic.

[dave404]

Dean Heller is a deadbeat! He still owes over $370,000 from his 2006 election. He has over $981,000 on hand! Two years on and this guy doesn't pay his creditors?!

Isn't this the Republican way? Borrow, borrow, borrow, spend, spend, spend. He is doing the same thing in Congress, borrow and spend, as he does in his campaign finance. What the hell is wrong with these people, is there an inbalance in their brain that causes such faulty logic. To scream for fiscal conservatism while having enough "bribes" on hand to pay off your 2006 campaign debt can only be considered as a lier or sympathetically, a pathetic joke. Yet, the yokels and rubes up North, who hate government and taxes, love him because he brings home $175,000,000 in earmarks (and yet says the government and its spending are BAD!).

Dupes! Wake the hell up! Pay for your own sewer treatment plant!

PS......goldy; nice!

[Judy]

Got to admit - the headline Heller Explains..." caught me off guard and ready to fillin the blanks. Like WTF could heller possibly explain?
Really now... what could he possibly expain to anyone?
Dean, please explain that lack of grey matter between your ears...
Dean - please explain your existance...

[Abbie Hoffman]

Thank goodness Jill Derby had the good sense to come back this year! If 5% of the people haven't changed their minds about Heller after all his buffoonery, we are doomed!!!

[You're doing a helluva job, Brownie!]

I wonder if Dubya has christened Heller "Deano" and Ensign "Tan Man."