Republicans have found the perfect spokesman for a substance-free election.

[babylonsister]

The Peter Principle

Republicans have found the perfect spokesman for a substance-free election.


Tim Fernholz | September 20, 2010



What they say about Pete Sessions is that he's a hard worker. It took him three tries to get into Congress, but get elected he did in 1996. Then it took him two attempts to win the chairmanship of the National Republican Congressional Committee, but maybe that worked out all right; when he missed his chance in 2008, his party was shellacked at the polls. Now Sessions is NRCC chair, the House Republicans' top political operative at a time when his party is poised to take back dozens of seats and likely a majority in the House.

"You think of a party committee chair as a lead tactician who knows where all the bodies are buried and where all the races are," a veteran political reporter observes. "That's not what you get from Sessions."

It's true: They don't say Pete Sessions is bright. His effort to take back the House has been plagued by a near constant series of gaffes. He organized a fundraiser in a Vegas strip club. He called Taliban insurgents a model for the Republican opposition. More recently, in a fumbling appearance on Meet the Press, he suggested Republicans would enact the policy recommendations produced by a roundtable of corporate CEOs. Democrats argued that Sessions was resurrecting the Bush administration. Republicans denied the charge, but Sessions' stance didn't do him -- or his party -- any favors.

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f they do manage to ride the wave of dissatisfaction with the economy and the president, will Republicans be ready to make law? By this time in 2006, the year Democrats took back the House, they had already promulgated a "Six for '06" legislative agenda -- and when elected, they passed every item. Republicans are still debating whether it is even in their interest to embrace specific policies. If they did, what agenda would Sessions set? Would he further align his party with the crazed populism of the Tea Party, crying out for Obama's birth certificate and condemning nonexistent socialism? Or return to the Business Roundtable policies he loves to cite, calling for lower corporate taxes and opposing laws to protect equal pay for women? He's disinclined to say, and it's not his job, which suits Sessions just fine. With a Democrat in the White House for at least another two years, Republican policy owes more to Nancy Reagan than Ron: Just say no.

"Whatever you do, people are going to take shots at you," Davis says of Sessions' critics. "His report card will be election night, and right now it looks like it'll be a pretty good election night."

It might be Sessions' first easy A in a while.


http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_peter_principle