The professor and the unruly dunces

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The House Republicans invited Obama to speak at their annual policy retreat and it really didn't turn out like they had planned.

Republicans invited Obama to appear at their annual conference; the president accepted � and then surprised them by asking that cameras and reporters be allowed into the room.

Republicans immediately agreed to the request, but they may be regretting it now.

Again and again, Obama turned the Republicans questions against them � accusing them of obstructing legislation for political purposes and offering solutions that won�t work.

It looked like Obama the professor was lecturing an unruly mob of dunces.  And yes they recognized a little too late that it was a mistake.

Tom Cole � former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma � said, �He scored many points. He did really well.� Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. � One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: �It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.�

Conservative Daniel Larison has done a really great job of documenting the intellectual vacuum that is the Republican leadership.  Today his topic was Mike Pence. 

Yesterday I said that the GOP remains just as intellectually bankrupt
and unimaginative as ever, but I need to amend that in light of Pence�s
comments. If possible, the GOP has somehow managed to become even worse
than it was in previous years. How else can you explain the desperate
bid to reframe tax credits for small business as a job-killing measure?
It is tax credits similar to these that the Republicans normally
advocate as a matter of course, and it was this sort of thing that
Republicans were demanding more of last year during the debate over the
stimulus bill. Instead of recognizing this and trying to claim that the
administration has adopted one of his party�s solutions, Pence is
reduced to the absurdity of claiming that possible tax reduction on
businesses that hire new employees is some revival of the dreaded
Carter years.

And this:

Let�s remember that Pence is not some minor member of the minority. He
is the House Republican conference chair, the third highest-ranking
Republican in that chamber, and he recently decided not to pursue a
Senate bid against Evan Bayh in order to re-build a Republican majority
in the House. If this is what he has to offer in his current role,
perhaps it would have been better for the GOP if he had tried his luck
back home in Indiana.

As I have said here before the current Republican �leadership� was chosen by the Bush/Cheney administration. They were not looking for leadership that was capable of original thought but individuals who could take orders from the administration without asking any questions. The result is an intellectual vacuum of which Pence is only one example. They are fighting what amounts to a tribal war rather than an ideological war because they are for the most part not smart enough to actually have an ideology.

It's no wonder that an articulate and intelligent president was able to make them look like fools.

Update:

This zinger from John Cole:

If Mike Pence really is regarded as one of the deep thinkers for the GOP, I�m beginning to understand why they refused to admit Terri Schiavo was brain-dead.