Grandma in the crosshairs? How about those Democrats?

In the wake of their electoral caning last year, Beltway Republicans had two ways to go: They could moderate and try helping to correct the catastrophic conditions they had bequeathed -- a political course of action they understood nothing about; or, they could redouble their efforts of slash and burn -- a political course of action they understood everything about.

An interesting dilemma. Should one venture into a gleaming, positive new day, even while stumbling about blind and unsteadily feeling the way and, not to mention, alienating nearly all of one's traditional allies? Or should one intensify the darkness, knowing it's shamefully unhelpful, but also comforting, both internally and to friends, in a hunkering-down kind of way.

Well, they have provided their answer; in starker, more animated terms, they have shoved it down the nation's raw throat. But let us not allow hindsight to blind us to the fact that for a while, however fleeting, the question was an authentically open one.

They were shaken, really shaken; 2008 was no garden-variety, changing-of-the-guard electoral rejection -- voters were bidding farewell to the most unpopular, incompetent president since James Buchanan; the economy in pseudoconservative hands had us gaping into the bleak chasm of the Great Depression II; and everywhere, it seemed, there was a vast yearning for something completely different.

Hence the recent optimism of political observers such as Howard Paster, Bill Clinton's legislative affairs director, was more than mere pollyannishness and unfounded hope: "The expectation was that things have gotten so bad in the last 16 years," said Paster of all things health-care related, but in general all things, period, "that there would be consensus on the need to act this time."

If nothing else, the 2008 politics of demographic realities seemed to dictate both the expectation and coming consensus. The aging, evangelical, lily-white determination of future Congressional majorities proved politically, culturally, and statistically impossible. November was, so to speak, a new day, which only the blindest would refuse to embrace.

Yet, despite an insurgent covey of smart Republican strategists who were reading the handwriting written so vividly on the electoral wall and advising against the perpetuation of a conniving status quo, the party, led by state- and district-safe ideologues (who are self-absorbedly afraid of 2010 primary challengers of even deeper ideological commitment), blindly though faithfully hewed to the old ways. They made mincemeat of Paster's expectation -- indeed, of a watchful, outside sea of expectation -- and confirmed his follow-up retrospective: "That was a mistake, that assumption" -- that expectation of a working, and workable, consensus.

Nonetheless it was, at the time -- as President Obama headed into four to eight years of difficult executive management which would have been infinitely facilitated by even some microcosmic level of bipartisan team play -- a legitimate one. And, until yesterday, however fine, however thin, however damn-near invisible that filament of bipartisan hope was, it at least dangled.

Until, of course, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley abruptly, publicly, and proudly ripped it out by its dying root. I won't repeat his demagogic fomentation here; you already know it all too well. But it was the blinding flare we've all been looking for: that absolute, undeniable signal that however nice Republican negotiators may pretend to play within the Beltway, at home they're hellbent on the most destructive possible course -- right down to the lyrical contemptibility of terrifying Grandma and her loving progeny.

As further evidenced by their deployment of town-hall goons, who no more genuinely believe in the future existence of programmatic death panels than the past necessity of plutocratic tax cuts. Anything to arrest the progressivity and egalitarian benefits of government: that's all they want. They are meager, petty little people with little black hearts.

So be it. One can't do anything about that. Still, let us not forget, as perhaps too many are doing, that this health-care thing is not in their hands. These town hall furies and the Beltway Republican strategy that inspired them are essentially pointless. Capitol Hill proponents of real reform won't be dissuaded by 500 raving lunatics at a stacked town hall meeting; neither will Democratic fence-straddlers, who are more politically savvy than that.

Health-care reform is solely a Democratic responsibility. Looking back, it always was. Looking forward, it can be no other. The opposition has made that clear. And what the straddlers need to be reminded of, with an authentic grassroots fury that erases all doubt and indecision, is that the broad contours of health-care reform, including a public option, were -- hey, remember? -- decided way back in November.

And should they deny that fury, promise them another in 2010.