It is no time for GOP triangulation

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann:

GEN. Colin Powell is wrong to say that the Republican Party must move to the center: Now is not the time to try for triangulation.

This is a time for the party to stand firm on its principles until this nation again comes around to the GOP's way of thinking. This process will be driven by the consequences of President Obama's program.

The challenge brought by Obama is no longer just theoretical: He means to pass the ultimate leftist agenda and has the votes to do so.

As a result, our nation will be unrecognizable well before the 2010 elections. Business will march to a beat drummed in Washington. The top producers will be hounded by confiscatory taxation. A majority will pay nothing or receive government welfare. Our health-care system will be destroyed. Illegal immigrants will be well on their way to citizenship.

Obama's brave new world will be the subject of the 2010 elections. We believe that his Congress will be swept from power as a result.

We think that inflation will join a lingering recession -- giving us recess-flation -- and that high unemployment will continue. Voters will recognize the damage to their health care as bureaucrats weigh in to prevent them from getting the care they need. Our security and defense failures may well have cost us Pakistan, and the nightmare of a nuclear-armed terrorist state may have already come true (even before Iran).

All America will be watching the Obama fallout, and Republicans must be seen as a clear alternative -- a strong voice for reversal of the harm the president will have inflicted -- if they are to benefit from this catastrophe.

If the GOP is seen as a moderate force, a party just looking to split the difference, voters will cynically conclude that there is no distinction between the parties.

...

This is from the guy who advised Clinton on triangulation. But he is clearly right. The GOP has nothing to gain by moving toward Obama's position. They will only find themselves sharing the blame for the disastrous results or not getting any credit if by some miracle he is successful.

It is time for the Republicans to focus the public debate on Obama's screw up. There will be so many, that the GOP will probably have to narrow them down to the top three or four just so voters can keep up with them.

At this point his closing of Gitmo and his handling of CIA interrogations is looking like a first class screw up that has the potential to get worse. His handling of the auto bankruptcies is also a major screw up where he is transferring ownership to unsecured union creditors in violation of valid security agreements by other creditors. His rationed health care plan will also be a major screw up. In that one the Republicans need to focus on the rationing.

There will be many more before 2010.