Jon Henke is an awesome writer and I recall his work on QandO but sometimes he seems less cynical than what is required in political advocacy. His recent post on Republican rhetoric illustrates my point:

[BEST] Reform: “We abused the power we were given, and we should not be trusted with the majority again until we have taken steps to reform ourselves. To that end, we are unilaterally adopting transparency, ethics and procedural rules for the Congressional Republican Caucuses. What’s more, the RNC, NRSC and NRCC are adopting strict accounting rules to protect donations and expenditures, and strict communications accountability rules, including disclosure of evidence for independent review and verification, that will ensure the integrity and accuracy of any message we communicate to the public. We hope the Democrats will join us in these reforms, but we will not wait for them to act before we get our own house in order.”

O-rly? I don’t fall into lolspeak in order to try to prove a point, but srsly? By the time we have the opportunity to retake Congress in 2010 BHO and his Libtard friends in Congress would have ruined the definition of transparency beyond repair that any allusion to it would be seen by an increasingly nasty public as mere lip service.

I do most of my political blogging on Red State, where I tend to be just a little more bitter, but this post warrants a reaction here. If we want to rebalance, or better yet, retake Congress in 2010, Reform rhetoric like this is nothing more than a reactive, not proactive, measure. The Democrats beat the drum hard and never relented in calling us scoundrels from the time that Bush won the presidency. They have been on a warpath to eliminate the party and its ideals and we want to invite the Democrats in reforming? No. There are some Dems whom I consider less scurrilous than others, but the goal is to unseat those who deserve to lose, contain those who can not be unseated, and to maintain a majority rooted in Conservatism with a respect for liberty in economics and personal freedom. To the very end I believe that the problem is mostly not so much in the message but in the marketing.