The GOP's modified stages of grief

Even Michael Steele thinks what the RNC is planning to do is nuts. And when the craziest man in Washington suddenly seems the model of human prudence, well, let's just say the target of his temporary sanity really should stop to restrategize.

But it won't, according to Politico columnist Roger Simon, who reported last Wednesday that "a member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the 'Democrat Socialist Party.' "

On the afternoon of his reporting, Simon appeared on MSNBC and before he spoke I thought, here it comes, a retraction: since that morning's publication someone at that laughingstock of the RNC had contacted Simon to issue a rush reversal -- just kidding, Rog, that sort of thing.

But nope, Mr. Simon didn't correct or update or refine one word of his story. It was all systems go at the RNC, according to Simon, even though earlier rumors of this particular species of organizational nervous breakdown had already been quieted and put to bed.

What's more, the RNC's Chairman of the Apparently Bored, Mr. Steele, appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday and refrained from framing the upcoming resolution as just another step in his diabolically counterintuitive march to total victory.

"If they do that they do that," he told MTP's David Gregory in a dismissive flurry of embarrassment, even as he insisted that he's still the party's "leader." He seemed resigned, however, that against his wishes of generalship that "they" would do just that: that this Wednesday they would advertise the party as hopelessly meshuga.

About a month ago conventional wisdom had it that Chairman Steele was headed for the door, propelled by many an RNC boot. Now conventional wisdom has it that Chairman Steele is probably safe until the 2010 election returns are in. But I'm sticking with the original conventional wisdom -- which I suppose makes it unconventional -- that Steele is operating (is that really the right verb?) on borrowed time.

To wit, per Simon: "When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label [of 'Democrat Socialist'] when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: 'Who cares?' "

Hence the RNC's membership is modifying and even surpassing the normal five stages of grief: from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance it has added (6) indifference, coexistent with (7) imbecility.

Meanwhile it appears that Newt Gingrich -- congenitally and forever stuck in stage one: anger -- is now determined to wrestle the party's broader leadership from that other zany right-winging Zeus on the loose, the Delphic Rush Limbaugh. But there's no mistaking this struggle for mythology; this is the real thing, a real Clash of Hateful Titanic Egos.

And wouldn't you know it? Newt's mightiest resurrection yet springs from the travails of a mortal woman: Nancy Pelosi -- whom the right-wing gods keep forgetting isn't nearly as prominent in the electoral mind as she is in their assorted obsessions, fixations, and preoccupations.

At any rate Newt has done seen his opportunities and he be takin' 'em: This, my friends, is his return to glory -- it's 1993-squared in his mind, and that means vileness-cubed.

The speaker, says Newt, is being "despicable, dishonest and vicious"; she has "lied to the House"; indeed she has "lie[d] to the country on national security matters"; she's "a trivial politician"; she's "viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes"; and in his final tip of the chivalrous hat, "she dishonors the Congress." Off with her head.

How Newt managed to omit slipping his favorite invective of "grotesque" into those characterizations -- or better yet, "fundamentally grotesque" -- I do not know. Maybe he's slipping, or perhaps he's purchased a thesaurus. But it's unmistakable, to me at least, that Newt sees Nancy as his ticket to filling the vast void of party leadership.

In none of the above, however, will you find any reference to any new ideas, any new policies, any new solutions to any old and persistent problems. What's in store for us, therefore, for maybe the longest 18 months in political history, is perhaps the most peculiar comeback strategy ever devised: a curious, unaccompanied mix of imbecility and hate.

Welcome to the new GOP.