After reading Fred Barnes’ column, I’m wondering if it’s his best column ever. First, there’s alot of reasons to like Fred’s column. Let’s start with this observation:

Many Republicans recoil from being combative adversaries of a popular president. They shouldn’t. Opposing Obama across-the-board on his sweeping domestic initiatives makes sense on substance and politics. His policies–on spending, taxes, health care, energy, intervention in the economy, etc.–would change the country in ways most Americans don’t believe in. That’s the substance. And a year or 18 months from now, after those policies have been picked apart and exposed and possibly defeated, the political momentum is likely to have shifted away from Obama and Democrats.

The morning after the 2006 massacre, I wrote a post saying that President Bush and the Republicans should start picking fights. I haven’t changed my mind. Poll after poll shows that President Obama is popular but his policies aren’t. Eventually, people won’t be wowwed by him. They’ll simply want to know whether his policies are making their 401(k)s bigger and whether the economy is creating jobs. They won’t much care if President Obama claims that his policies kept job losses at a minimum.

Eventually, Republicans will have to come up with an appealing agenda to give people a reason to vote for them. That time isn’t now. Now’s the time when they seperate themselves from President Obama’s and Speaker Pelosi’s irresponsible spending habits. That alone sends a strong signal that business as usual in Washington is coming to a halt.

That’s important because people are sick of this administration’s affection for bailouts and industry nationalization schemes. It won’t take much to win on the spending issue if they’ve already convinced people that Obama and Pelosi don’t have the nation’s best interests at heart.

Here’s another important observation from Mr. Barnes’s column:

If Republicans scan their history, they’ll discover unbridled opposition to bad Democratic policies pays off. Those two factors, unattractive policies plus strong opposition, were responsible for the Republican landslides in 1938, 1946, 1966, 1980, and 1994. A similar blowout may be beyond the reach of Republicans in 2010, but stranger things have happened in electoral politics. They’ll lose nothing by trying.

A sports analogy illustrates my point perfectly here. In 1980, sportswriters asked whether Herb Brooks should shoot for the gold or if he should settle for a bronze or silver medal. At the time, I thought it was a stupid question because Herb Brooks never ’settled’ for anything less than the best. Still, I saw where the sportswriters were coming from.

The Soviet team’s roster, as they were called then, was filled with stars like Vladislav Tretiak, the best goalie in international history, defensemen like Kasatanov and Pervyukhin and forwards like Kharlimov, Maltsev and Makarov. This was a team with all stars at every position. More importantly, they played as a team.

The thing is, Herb Brooks noticed that they were playing sloppy. I remember reading an SI article after the Olympics ended in which Brooks said that he noticed their line changes weren’t crisp like past Soviet teams and that their decisions weren’t the high quality decisions that was their hallmark.

Smart people like Newt Gingrich, Dick Morris and Karl Rove are noticing the chinks in the Democrats’ armor. They look formidable with huge margins in the House and Senate and a popular president at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. Still, they’re pushing stunningly unpopular legislation that’s giving the Republicans something to exploit.

The point is that going all out doesn’t cost the GOP anything. If they ‘only’ experience a gain of 25 seats, they’ll still be in a more powerful position in the next congress while creating a little momentum heading into 2012. If things break right, if people get fed up with the Democrats’ overreaching on spending, on health care ‘reform’, on bailoutmania, the Republicans could surprise people in 2010.

The Republicans have fertile ground to plow. The public is already dubious of a government-run health insurance plan, the core of Obama-Care. And there’s plenty more for Republicans to focus on, including the threat of a government panel that decides which medical practices are covered and which are ostracized. Defeating ObamaCare, given Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill, may be difficult but it’s not an impossibility. If Republicans lead the charge, health care providers and consumers are likely to join the active opposition. Otherwise, they’ll remain passive.

If health care providers have a trustworthy ally in the fight, it’s quite possible to get enough senators nervous about the political fallout if they vote for universal health care. All it takes is for a group of DLC type of senators to vote with Republicans to not include health care reform in the reconcilliation process. Once it takes 60 votes to pass, the dynamics shift dramatically.

The more fight the GOP shows on President Obama’s health care initiative, the more political capital President Obama expends in a losing effort. That makes President Obama more vulnerable. It figues that Democrats are weakest when President Obama is weak.

The bottom line is that Republicans aren’t in nearly as desperate straits as the media is suggesting. The media is either running interference for the Democrats or they simply haven’t noticed the Democrats’ vulnerabilities.

Finally, the more Republicans fight, the more willing people become to contribute to their cause, further strengthening their hand. With so much to gain and practically nothing to lose, the GOP should go for the gold.

Technorati: Congress, President OBama, Speaker Pelosi, Bailouts, Health Care, Reforms, Democrats, Loyal Opposition, Fiscal Restraint, Republicans

Cross-posted at California Conservative