Good Advice

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Ed Rollins offered some good and funny advice in his column today that I wanted to pass on.

First to the Democrats:

Remember the game is now all yours. If you get the problems solved, the glory is all yours, too. If you fail, you don't have Bush and Cheney to blame anymore -- or any other Republican, for that matter.

Don't be rushed by current events. Do something Congress has never done before. Plan. Read the bills that you are passing. And think of the kids who are going to have to pay for all this in the future.

To my Republican friends in the House and Senate:

Be a real opposition party. Articulate what you stand for and stand up to the president and the Democrats with ideas that can counter the direction they will be taking the country.

Realize you are going to be in the wilderness for a time. The country needs an opposition party and you're it. Along with the Republican governors, you are going to have to cobble together the concepts and solutions that will attract voters back to our party.

To the president-elect:

Beware of your own party. Republicans are not your problem. Each member of Congress will think they are your constitutional equal. The more senior they are, the more they will test you.

You will have to remind them from time to time that if they want to be the constitutional equal, they need to bring the other 434 members over to your office.

Either that or they can go get another 66 million or so votes to add to their congressional total to be your equal. Many will have their own agendas and some of their ideas will be good ideas. Many more will be disastrous.

I thought the references to planning for the senate were funny. Also, they constantly point to doing things for the children all the while saddling them with debt before they're ever born. You think you have debt? Your unborn children have not even begun to pay.

For the Republicans, McCain's campaign pointed out that appeasement doesn't work for them. The Rockefellers got exactly what they wanted in a candidate and lost their shirts.

I also found it telling that Rollins points out that Obama's biggest problems will come from his own side. With basic majorities in both houses, he can get most of his agenda passed as long as he can convince his party to adopt his agenda as their own. He's young and inexperienced, and they know that. They will try to assert the Congress over the Executive and put him in his place.