The GOP will get the upper hand on policy by talking about how they’re going to talk about policy at some point in the future.  Eric Cantor, as usual, shows the way:

Last night on Fox, Sean Hannity asked House Republican Whip Eric Cantor whether the president’s “massive amount of spending…is capable of getting us out of the economic downturn we now find ourselves in?” It was a perfect opportunity for Cantor to tee off on the spending excesses in the stimulus.  Instead, he said, “Well, Sean, if you’re talking about the stimulus plan that was passed, I’m trying to put the debate behind us.  We are where we are…”

So very fucked, they are.

I’m not entirely sure that the Republican Party has had a legitimately new policy idea since 1994, and even the Contract for America, as the TV has told me over and over again, was in development for 15 years prior.  It’s how we got switchgrass, Mars missions and human-animal hybrid bans from Bush’s later State of the Unions - a party so desperate to prove that the old ways of doing old things are the only ways of doing things spends most of its time finding new examples and new code words to portray the same message.  The GOP needs to actually do something different in order to have any shot at being a non-minority party in the future, and figure out a way to discuss it that doesn’t rely on referencing Dred Scott and volcanoes.  And no, Newt Gingrich’s idea of claiming non-controversial issues in non-partisan language as Republican issues is not the solution, although it is a hilarious thought.  I can’t wait for Sarah Palin to run in 2012 on the need for the federal government to ensure regular mail delivery and planes for the Air Force.

On an entirely related and almost assuredly debacular note, CPAC begins today.