GOP 'huffed and puffed,' said 'just wait til we question Hillary,' then laid the usual embarrassing egg. Not that the GOP is capable of being embarrassed as they stand by watching Obama redistribute the US-Noonan

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1/25/13,  "Noonan: Lessons Conservatives Need to Learn," Peggy Noonan, WSJ

"(GOP) Members of the Senate and the House have huffed and puffed for months [about Benghazi]: "It's worse than Watergate, Americans died." Just wait till they question the secretary of state, they'll get to the bottom of it. 

Wednesday they questioned Hillary Clinton. It was a dud. 

The senators weren't organized or focused, they didn't coordinate questions, follow up, have any coherent or discernible strategy. The only senator who really tried to bore in was Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who asked a pointed question that was never answered: If you wanted to find out what happened when the consulate was attacked, why didn't you pick up the phone the next day and call those who'd been there? John McCain made a spirited, scattered speech—really, it was just like him—that couldn't find the energy to end in serious questions....

All this looked like another example of the mindless personal entrepreneurialism of the Republicans on the Hill: They're all in business for themselves. They make their speech, ask their question, and it's not connected to anyone else's speech or question. They aren't part of something that moves and makes progress. 
 
Minority parties can't act like this, in such a slobby, un-unified way.

Hill Republicans continue not to understand that they are the face of the party when the cameras are trained on Washington. They don't understand how they look, which is 

like ants on a sugar cube.

Finally, it became obvious this week that the Republican party top to bottom has to start taking Barack Obama seriously. All the famous criticisms of him are true: He has no talent for or interest in sustained, good-faith negotiations, he has no real sense of alarm about the great issue of the day, America's debt. He's a chill presence in a warm-blooded profession. 

But he means business. He means to change America in fundamental ways and along the lines of justice as he sees it. The proper response to such a man is not—was not—that he's a Muslim, he's a Kenyan, he's working out his feelings about colonialism. Those charges were meant to marginalize him, but they didn't hurt him They damaged Republicans, who came to see him as easy to defeat. 

He doesn't care if you like him—he'd just as soon you did, but it's not necessary for him. He is certain he is right in what he's doing, which is changing the economic balance between rich and poor. The rich are going to be made less rich, and those who are needy or request help are going to get more in government services, which the rich will pay for. He'd just as soon the middle class don't get lost in the shuffle, but if they wind up marginally less middle class he won't be up nights.  

The point is redistribution.

The great long-term question is the effect the change in mood he seeks to institute will have on what used to be called the national character. Eight years is almost half a generation. Don't you change people when you tell them they have an absolute right to government support regardless of their efforts? Don't you encourage dependence, and a bitter sense of entitlement? What about the wearing down of taxpayers? Some, especially those who are younger, do not fully understand that what is supporting them is actually coming from other people; to them it seems to come from "the government," the big marble machine far away that prints money. 

There is no sign, absolutely none, that any of this is on Mr. Obama's mind. His emphasis is always on what one abstract group owes another in the service of a larger concept. 

"You didn't build that" are the defining words of his presidency....

Mr. Obama is not, as has been said, the left's Ronald Reagan. Reagan won over, Mr. Obama just wins. What Mr. Obama really is is Franklin D. Roosevelt without the landslides. He has the same seriousness of intent but nothing like the base of support....

Mr. Obama received 66 million votes in 2012—but four years earlier he recieved 69.5 million. 

His support went down, not up. 

He is moving forward as if he has FDR's mandate and attempting to crush his enemy every bit as ruthlessly as FDR, who was one ruthless patrician. 

It will take guts and unity to fight him. Can the GOP, just in Washington, for now, develop those things?"

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