Those inventive Republicans

The NY Times recently portrayed Barack Obama as possessing -- and as time passes there is less and less reason to doubt it -- a "peaceful state of mind," a "friendly attitude of acceptance," and an "even-tempered and levelheaded" and "unexcitable steadiness."

In all things presidential Obama is also said to be emulating Lincoln, even though the above qualities are more readily marketable to our memories in the persons of, say, FDR or JFK, since they're so accessibly on tape.

But no matter: From wherever it comes, Obama's personal mojo is galloping along. And however appealingly emulated or congenital his presidential qualities are, there is yet greater cause to celebrate them: They're driving Republicans absolutely nuts with worry and frustration.

Oh happy days indeed. The loyal opposition is adrift, so lost at sea that portions of it are even pondering a certain reasonableness and humanity:

"I think at a time like this, at a time of crisis, a lot of people would like to see people try to work together, especially with Obama not even being sworn in yet," said the Michigan Republican chairman (who is battling for the RNC chairmanship) to the Times.

"What you don’t want to be," he concluded, "is the party that’s always attacking or being negative with no alternatives." Furthermore, in his blog the chairman scribbled electronically: "Partisan politics in times like these for the sake of politics is not healthy."

In other words, the state chairman was saying they should no longer want to be Republicans, or at least what we've all come to know as Republicans.

Perhaps somewhere, far away from the public eye and journalistic scrutiny, GOP luminaries indeed sit around and debate with real philosophical depth the difficult issues of our time. Amongst themselves they may even offer the occasional solution or two. I mean, who knows, it cannot metaphysically be ruled out.

But if they were to do so in public then they wouldn't be the lovably dyspeptic Republicans we have, as I said, all come to know. Partisan politics defines them -- the unhealthy embrace of the purely political has been their sole reason for being ever since they convinced the ungrounded multitudes that they could have it all, without paying for or even regulating it.

That didn't work out so well, yet by all accounts the GOP remains breezily faithful to its fundamental doctrine: high-minded market economics even in the face of its lowest consequences. Which is merely another way of saying that all Republicans really have left is -- you got it -- attack, attack, attack.

Speaking only for myself, of course, that delights to no end. I don't even want to imagine the dreadful boredom of four years of pure policy, or some unattainable pursuit of a 21st-century Era of Good Feelings, some phony post-partisan lovefest that is as surely doomed as George Bush's syntax or Sarah Palin's Christian charity.

No, give us attack, and lots of it.

And what do you know, just in time for Christmas came this, from governementexecutive.com:

"In a bid to beef up House Republicans' ability to scrutinize an Obama administration, incoming House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is moving to increase the GOP side of the panel's oversight power."

Praise be -- the good chairman from Michigan can buy a Volkswagen and stick a daisy in the dashboard, for all we care, because we'll always have the House Republicans.

"Issa spokesman Frederick Hill said … Republicans want to be ready to probe executive branch waste, fraud and abuse on their own if bipartisan cooperation fails."

And the best part is this, which comes to us not from the metaphysical world but that of the empirical: If after impressive searching they fail to find any executive branch waste, fraud and abuse, they'll just make it up.

You know, like economic theory, or foreign threats.

So God bless Tiny Tim and those House Republicans, both of whom hobble about, lifting our spirits and giving us hope, in their own little way.