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August 29, 2009

The Tao of Bob

Consider Bob Tiernan.

Stop giggling. I'm serious.

You'll remember Bob. If you don't you should get to know him, because he's quickly becoming the embodiment of the footnote in history. It's a far cry from the destroyer-of-organized-labor he was, back in the day.

Good times. Good times. Well, not for you, for him. But still.

Some time last year, Bob decided to get on board the good shop Oregon GOP, hoping to steer it out of the Doldrums; his mission, to get the ship moving toward some sort of shore before they started consuming the horses for food (that's why, in case you were wondering, the sailors called those regions the "Horse Latitudes". Digression. Sorry). And, after an absurd episode when he got wild with enthusiasm over being somehow pivotal in getting Michael Steele into the National GOP Chair (exulting that at last it changed the appearance of the GOP as a party of old white businessmen – just the appearance, mind you, not the substance, it's still a party of old white businessmen) he and the GOP have kind of pulled a wide-angle fade.

They've been quiet, man. Now, I know better than to simply count out a group like this, for the GOP, down has never necessarily equaled out. But as the GOP Quietude has lengthened, it caused me to wonder – are they planning something big? Some sort of polity-intoxicating charm offensive in the offing?

Well, Bob has surfaced. At long last, an Op-Ed on health care in the Oregonian! Magnificent! Putting on my David Reinhard Breakaway Editorial-Reading Suit, I girded my loins, bellied up, and dived in to … utter banality. The Op-Ed, such as it is, is a masterpiece of stale GOP framing, casting health care reform as a "mistake we can't make" (as opposed to the mistakes we could make over the course of the Bush years, I suppose), and putting the same lipstick on the same pigs they've always herded out when they need the little guy to make the mistake that somehow the big guy's interest is their own:

• Handwaving about how the USA has the "worlds greatest health care system" that the wealthy from around the world are beating down the door to partake of – that only guarantees access to the rich and still provides us with an embarrassingly high infant mortality rate and already functions as a "death panel" for those who are too old, poor, or useless (to insurance companies) to maintain;
• Tired reruns of the spectre of "increased burdens on small business" – although nobody's ever been able to explain to me how making it unnecessary for businesses to source health insurance for their employees, thereby reducing the cost of doing business, increases their burden;
• The sheer horror of our government "taking over" the health-care system, which apparently has frightened the wits out of the "Keep The Government out of Medicare" Crowd;
• The preservation of a parasitic health-insurance industry in which – if you're lucky enough to have a job that provides insurance – only provides you with one provider, being dressed up as choice

You get the idea. Not just the same dog 'n' pony show, the same dog 'n' pony. Only the pony's been stuffed, and the dog's dead – and it's stinky.

It was then I realized that there's a certain placid acceptance of things as-they-are to Bob. Maybe it's the proud way he smiles at you while pretending he has new ideas. Maybe it's the way he bragged that the ORGOP has improved the lives of Oregonians by way of a series of reminder PSA that almost nobody paid any attention to. Maybe it's the way the shiny new ORGOP website (linked here only for purposes of illumination) looks spiffy until you realize that there are only three entries to the blog (the last, a month and a half ago).

Through all, Smilin' Bob keeps smiling. While the world spins about him and teabaggers thuggishly disrupt town hall meetings, Bob just is.

One lame Op-Ed full of cut-n-pasted talking points, without even the wan passion that a Hovde or a Reinhard brings to it, and it's mission accomplished. I still think they're trying to lull us into a false sense of security.

Well, it's starting to work.

It's getting hard to make fun of the ORGOP. It's become downright redundant.

Posted by The Chinuk at August 29, 2009 05:23 PM