For GOP, it's hoping obstructionism triggers another 1994

If you thought the Republicans were trying a magical incantation in opposing Obama's economic stimulus to resurrect another 1994 Republican political tsunami, you aren't alone.

According to Politico, that's exactly what the Republicans are trying to do:

There are two models that Republicans are looking at,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

“One is 1990, [President George H.W.] Bush gets together with the Democrats at Andrews Air Force Base, raises taxes and loses the next election,” he explained. “The other is 1993, Democrats have a series of proposals to spend and tax. Republicans vote no and regain the House and Senate.”

Grover Norquist is exactly the kind of person the GOP should stop listening to.  His track record on advice has been downright miserable.  Mark Penn bad.  Dick Morris predicting Obama carries TN bad.

Politico notes the following as why GOP dreams of 1994 Pt. II: "This time its fiscal" won't do any better with the American public in 2010 as "An American Carol" did in box offices last year (there's simply no market for it):

• President Bill Clinton never won a popular majority in his two elections. Obama did. His vote margin exceeded 9 million votes, the largest ever for a nonincumbent presidential contender — including Ronald Reagan’s 1980 win over President Jimmy Carter. (Obama was more popular than Reagan was in 1980... how many conservatives can handle that thought?)
• Republicans aren’t in the ascendancy as they were in 1994. After two victorious election cycles, the Democrats have puréed the Republicans into their purest conservative caucus.
• On health care: Ordinary families and businesses, big and small, are struggling with health care’s rising costs. Insurance companies and drug makers that stood by Republicans in the last debate are now cozying up to the Obama team, hoping to influence a final reform bill.

  “He’s got a lot more running room,” said Billy Tauzin, the former Republican congressman from Louisiana who heads PhRMA, the drug company’s trade group in Washington.

  “There is a lot more urgency on the issue, and there is a lot more common ground,” he added. “There are extraordinary coalitions of people who would not sit down at a table with each other in 1992 that are now working on the issue today.”

But there are plenty of other reasons why the GOP shouldn't be banking on opposition to the stimulus bill leading to another 1994 that Politico didn't mention:

• Clinton's stimulus plan contained tax increases on the upper-income brackets.  Obama's plan contained tax cuts.  Arguably, it was the biggest tax cut in American history.
• Democrats in Congress held the majority (with a small break during the Reagan years) for forty years, so there was a strong argument that a party in power that longer was now an institution against the change American needed.  We've had the majority in Congress since 2006. 
• Voters in 1994 still identified the Republican Party as the Party of Reagan.  In 2010, voters will still identify the Republican Part as the Party of W.
• Most political scientists, when looking at party affiliation and partisan attitudes to the parties, say the public is more similar to the Republican famine days of post-Watergate than the Republicn feast years of 1994.
• Comedian Rush Limbaugh and talk radio aren't new or novel anymore and don't dictate the narrative like they used to.  Now blogs and, yes, even MSM, counter the message with actual fact-based reporting.
• Repeat after me:  John Boehner isn't Newt Gingrich, nor is Eric Cantor. 

If the Republicans honestly believe that any message beyond their now almost universal opposition to all things Obama  (including Alan Keyes embarassing refusal to even acknowledge the "premise" that Obama is President), then they can lead to their own self-destruction without narry a worry from me.  The only dent they've made in Obama's poll standings is that some conservative Republicans who had approved of Obama came home.  He still remains an incredibly popular President who's handling on the economy is, by and large, supported by large majorities of the American people who also almost as much oppose the Congressional Republicans handling on the economy.  This is hardly evidence that we, as Democrats, ARE DOOMED.

Instead of praying for the second coming of President Reagan or Newt Gingrich (some Republicans, apparently, have forgotten how fleeting Gingrich's reign really was), perhaps they could learn to find their own authentic voice.  Whether it was Reagan or Obama, people like them inspire people not because of who they imitated, but the uniqueness of their voice.