Since there isn’t much that the government can do about the price of international oil in the short term, responses to price spikes usually follow a predictable template with slight variations for party. Get tough on OPEC, draw down the Strategic Reserve, drill ANWR (usually GOP), combat price gouging (Dem). New ideas come along once in a while, but I don’t think I have ever seen a move as dumb as Bill Frist’s recent proposal to essentially give everybody a hundred bucks.
This move was classic Frist. While you can see the underlying logic (people are spending more and a little cash will help them out) every detail simply came out wrong. Which Republican constituency does Frist think that he is going to please? To the religious right this looks suspiciously like a few dozen pieces of silver, especially after (from their perspective) an insultingly weak show of delivering “family”-friendly legislation. Neocons would see it as money that could be spent bombing Iran and I don’t have to explain why the idea of running up debt for a (literal) government giveaway would make your average paleoconservative livid. Try to imagine the sedatives that it must have taken to calm down Grover Norquist. [Update: oh yeah, ordinary people were insulted that the government wants to give them money while ignoring the underlying problems].
From the above link, some quotes show how deeply Frist’s idea tanked:
House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, called Frist’s rebate proposal “insulting.”
“Over the weekend I heard about it from my constituents a few times,” Boehner added. “They thought it was stupid.”
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, disavowed it, too.
“The 100 rebate? That was never my idea,” he said.
Looking at the basic advantages of Bill Frist’s position it seems amazing how he cannot win. Frist unquestionably made the miscalculation of his life over Schiavo, he got outmaneuvered by a rebel moderate faction over the nuclear option (although debate persists over whether he actually had the votes), Harry Reid ate his lunch over the stalled intelligence investigation, he blew a major counterattack in the ethics wars and now this.
The GOP has earned a reputation for its skill at managing the convoluted strategery and wheels-within-wheels that is DC politics. Folks like Tom DeLay and Karl Rove are undeniably good at what they do, as long as by ‘what they do’ you mean consolidating power rather than governing. I understand that rising to the status of Majority/Minority Leader is a long, brutal process that selects for people who have an extra bit of politicking mojo, and in that context you have to wonder whether Bill Frist is the best that Republicans have to offer. Think about it this way; during the Lott-Frist transition the latter was rumored to have the President’s ear in a way that Lott never did. That would make Frist more of a Bush nominee, in which incompetent-but-loyal mold he fits quite well, than the winner of a Darwinian contest among a tough field of operatives.
For me the saddest part of Frist’s story is that he seemed like a decent enough guy at the beginning. He supported medical research and opposed the kind of theocratic nonsense that got him in trouble in 2005. But when the presidential bug bit Frist’s efforts to rally the base to his side came across as calculated and insincere, hamfisted and in the end disappointing to practically everybody. If you don’t believe me check the next online straw poll. Unless John McCain shoots a judge and eats a baby Frist will come in dead last, again.