Memo to whatever The Left calls itself today:

Re: The mid-term election outlook

You’re gonna lose cause what ya’ done was STUPID!

If stupid offends you substitute ill-advised,

Disagree? OK run on your passage of the so-called stimulus package; run on what you call health care reform. Better yet do conservatives a favor and disclose in detail the actual provisions of these two mega-tonnage stink bombs.

But you know you can’t, not if you want to win in any but a safe; make that a very safe district. Instead you are running from your legislative handiwork.

The Republican Party is resurgent precisely because its members said NO to wasting money, creating more government and in an unseemly rush at that. Most folks didn’t see the GOP as obstinately standing in the way of good government, but defending against very bad government.

So now the Left is in jeopardy of losing control of the agenda. The House is probably going to change hands and  even the Senate appears to be in play. There are two months left to do something. And the options are:

1- Look to party leaders, the face of the Democrat Party.  Sen. Harry Reid of Searchlight NV aka “Mr Excitement”. How about the pop-eyed Pelosi from California Chablis and brie country? The president himself with his Cheshire Cat grin? No, no and no. Let’s go to the bench. Rep Maxine Waters or Barney Frank? Not this time eh.

2- Take reasonable stands: Praise the AZ immigration law as a legitimate effort by a state to get the feds to enforce their own laws. Admit that  a mosque near ground-zero may not be a “bridge builder”. There’s still time blue dogs. Some people may believe you.

3- Admit that you went too far. Your zeal to lift the common man caused you to over reach, nobly over reach, but over reach none the less. Please let us continue to run things and we’ll amend and improve the sow’s ear we made. Warn that the “extreme right” wants to radically “repeal and replace”. Be carefull with this though because you might have defend what you made and you really don’t want to do that. Best stay vague.

4-Appear on MSNBC and attack the right, extreme conservatives and Sarah Palin. Say anything you like. The hosts are party hacks.

5-Try to get on Fox because that’s what the majority watch. Make nice. Blame everything on Republicans. Claim that you are actually quite conservative in a great many ways.

6-Re-define dirt as in political dirt. There is nothing too petty not to bring up. Opponent once short-changed a paper route customer? Get on it!

7-Remember the three R’s: Radical, Racist and Republican.

8-Make fun of Sarah Palin. Make fun of her family. No on second thought #8 may be ill-advised. Forget it.

9-Make fun of the Tea Party’s. Also note with sincere concern that the Tea Party movement is causing fractures in the Republican Party.

10-Ask why the GOP isn’t willing to go along with a least some of Pres Obama’s agenda. Isn’t that unreasonable? (See also #7)

11- Try to extend unemplyment benefits another 99 weeks. Dare the GOP to vote against working people “who’ve shown up (well not lately) and played by the rules.”

12- Talk a lot about voters who are angry. Explain that you too are still angry at George Bush.

13-Lie. Hey its worked before.

I hope my faux memo points to the electoral jail in which our opponents find themselves. What they hoped to trumpet is in fact so bad that the Republicans could make very effective ads just quoting various passages. The stimulus bill so called was the beginning of Democrat trouble. More than 800 billion dollars might have temporarily goosed the economy had it truly been spent on “shovel-ready” (remember?) projects but much of the money has been used for operational needs or to save the jobs of public union employees. My favorite is the millions set aside to teach “disadvantaged” populations how to convert from analog to digital TV! And millions to help folks buy the converter boxes. What a great piece of investigative reporting it would be to find out which Democratic pal had a few warehouses filled with converter boxes not made in the USA. The stimulus is larded with  waste like this and the enthusiasm gap will only widen as the tale is told.

The health reform bill is another rich source of potential voter outrage. This one is so twisted that illumination may actually get the GOP a veto-proof majority. If that sounds far-fetched start working your way through the bill. This is a job because in addition to the bill there are hundreds of references to other laws etc that make the whole thing a kind of legislative black hole. But there are parts of the measure that are easily understood concerning the many new bureaucracies and the new powers granted to everyones’ worst nightmare: the IRS.

The GOP’s formula to max its victories should be in my opinion to relentlessly and specifically hang the Dems own legislation around their necks for all to see.

As Democrats more clearly realize they are unwilling players in “No Exit” expect a nastier and nastier set of responses. This, they will hope, will play for the Kool-Aid drinkers who accepted Obama’s Hope and Change message and ran eagerly to vote in 2008. Even if some true believers return to vote again for Dems I doubt it will change the fundamentals of November 2010.

Conservatives have been given a great opportunity this year. The Left failed to realize that “Change” was heard as “reform” by most. Instead of the vast overhaul of government to restore something closer to the founders’ intent the winners just created more of the same, a lot more of the same thing that concerned most citizens. Conservatives know the welfare state can’t be dismantled in a short time. Indeed Edmund Burke would argue that the demolition be accomplished gradually since people resist sudden change of established programs. The winning conservative position for the time being is a return to fiscal discipline, limited government, a real free market and elimination of what Ayn Rand called “The Aristocracy of Pull”.