"America Is Not Yet Lost"

That's the title of Paul Krugman's recent scare-mongering New York Times op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html).

May I suggest a subtitle to be placed beneath Krugman's ominous title? America is Not Yet Lost...But Only Because the 2010 and 2012 Elections Will Give Americans a Chance to Change Course."

Krugman spends the bulk of the article railing against the rules of the United States Senate that make it difficult to govern. He does make one good point: the practice of placing holds on uncontroversial and/or low-level presidential appointees in order to extract millions of dollars in pork for one's own district HAS to stop. That's absolutely absurd. Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, is doing that as we speak. His constituents should be calling him and giving him a piece of their mind.

But Krugman, like so many columnists whose political sympathies lie with the Left, couldn't resist an attack on that evil filibuster rule...and that's where he stumbles into the twin realms of partisan drivel and willful blindness.

Quoth Krugman: "It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis."

Earth to Paul: it WAS the message in Massachusetts. You have to wonder what Krugman could possibly have been doing while the special election unfolded. Scott Brown signed numerous autographs by putting a big "41" after his name. That wasn't the number Brown wore in his basketball days, Mr. Krugman, that was a direct and unapologetic allusion to the fact that Brown would be the 41st Republican vote in the Senate with the power (and the mandate, directly from the voters of Massachusetts, I might add) to put a stop the Democratic Party's health insurance reform bill.

A vote for a Republican, in the case of Massachusetts, not to mention in Virginia and New Jersey back in November, is a repudiation of the Democratic Party's left-wing agenda, which is completely out-of-step with the American electorate. Remember: the Democrats won back the House and Senate by running centrist candidates in 2006. That was the strategy articulated by none other than current Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

The result has been disastrous for the Democrats: it caused Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and their fellow lefties in the media to view Democratic victories in '06 and '08 as a mandate for the progressive/liberal agenda, when in fact it was NOTHING OF THE SORT. Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 because they didn't have an "R" next to their names or, more precisely, because they didn't belong to the party of Satan incarnate, George W. Bush. The misreading of the mandate has killed President Obama's approval ratings and set his party up for catastrophic losses in 2010 and, quite possibly, 2012.

It's not the Senate rules that doomed Barack Obama's first year and has put the Democrats on the ropes. Barack Obama came into office with sky-high approval/favorability ratings, enormous reserves of goodwill from the media and the average citizen, and huge congressional majorities. He completely squandered it, with lots of help from Pelosi and Reid. The Democrats had the votes necessary to pass their ill-advised, unpopular health care overhaul...and they didn't get it done. It's politically convenient for them to blame it on the Republicans. It's also totally false. They can't seem to bring themselves to admit what is now an obvious fact: Americans rejected their hard-left, hyper-partisan, utterly un-transparent approach.

Even though the GOP has come to the table with ideas for real reform, people like Paul Krugman (and Barack Obama) apparently think they'll benefit from continuing to paint the GOP as "the party of no" or the party of "paralysis." But, the problem is, they tried that in November in New Jersey and Virginia, and they tried it again in Massachusetts last month.

How'd that work out for ya, champ?