Posted 6:34 PM by steve

Rich Lowry is off in writing that as Barack Obama and the Democrats have the initiative, "until such time as their policies are perceived to have failed, it doesn't matter too much what Republicans do".

No, Republicans can do two things that will very much matter.

First, they can help hasten the day when America perceives the Obama policies to have failed. Just as the Democrats started laying the groundwork for declaring Bush a failed president long before the public at large was tuned in, so too can the GOP start to hit Obama.

And second, the GOP needs to have their alternatives fully developed and vetted so when the American people go looking for an alternative to Obama, the GOP isn't caught unprepared. Granted, when the public does get fed up, the opposition party can benefit just by not being in charge and without having to have a carefully drawn up set of policy proposals (again evidenced by the Democratic gains in 2006 and 2008), it helps if the opposition party is actually on the record with their ideas to reverse the slide.