Winning Slogan for '08: "Veto Machine"

The bellweather for the issue of wasteful federal spending is Amtrak. Not that a one-off grab of taxpayer money via an earmark by a back-bencher is excusable (it is definitely not), but Amtrak is a decades old, embarrassing failure of a persistent sinkhole of taxpayer funds. It goes so far beyond indistinguishable little hands in the cookie jar. So when there is not even a pretense of a debate over funding for Amtrak, you know where the taxpayer stands in the minds of our sausage factory shop foremen. The abuse of taxpayers continues unabated and the brief sweet nothings whispered into our ears by the Republican majority in the Great Sausage Factory are now just the bitter memories of a dopey naive dreamer. Kinda like this girl.

The conventional wisdom is that congressional Republicans know they are in trouble and are buying votes anyway they can with obscene porkbarrel spending. I think the truth is more that congressional Republicans feel quite powerful and quite safe in sticking it to taxpayers. We face a mortal enemy and an existential threat in radical Islamism and weapons proliferation and the Democrats, generally speaking, are lost in LaLa land when it comes to how to deal with this threat, so the go-along-get-along politics is in full swing because most Republicans see themselves sticking around for awhile and thus are focused on granting and giving favors and rising up the leadership ranks. So what is the battle strategy? Snipe a few of the biggest culprits and elect anybody who dubs themself the "Veto Machine" to the Oval Office in 2008. The advice is free. Who will take it? Rudy? McCain? Hillary? Warner?