Grouchy Old Party Needs to Chill Out

Republicans need anger management. I talk to young people all the time, and over and over again they have the same complaint: that I’m out of schnapps. But their second big gripe is that there’s no difference between the two parties. Not true: The Republicans are much more ticked off.

Look at John Bolton -- if you can. Now, I don’t know if this man has human-relationship issues, but I do know two things: One, his hair’s not speaking to his mustache. And two, the Republicans actually like the idea of our most sensitive diplomat being a rage-a-holic. Asking this man to represent us at the United Nations is like asking R. Kelly to chaperon the Miss Teen USA pageant.

Like Bolton, what Republicans need is to find a channel for their anger; I mean a channel besides Fox News. The Grouchy Old Party doesn’t know what to do with the anger that’s fueled it for decades; it’s as if Wile E. Coyote had caught the Road Runner. They’ve taken the White House, Congress, the courts and what’s left of Zell Miller’s mind -- and it’s just made them more steamed, until the face of the party has gone from smiling Ronald Reagan to now some hideous hybrid of Jerry Falwell and Bobby Knight.

Democrats, on the other hand, don’t need anger management. They need boot camp. They need a giant drill sergeant an inch from their face screaming, “Show me your war face!�

Oh sure, the Democrats get riled up every now and then. You can tell because some guy in Berkeley orders a bumper sticker. But it’s not nearly the kind of vein-popping, gut-churning rage that consumes the entire right wing, from the head of the Family Research Council all the way down to that guy in your office who sits by himself during lunch reading Sean Hannity books.

It seems that since Michael Dukakis was asked how he’d feel if his wife got raped and he said, “whatever,� the Democrats have been the party that speaks softly and carries Massachusetts. When Dick Cheney hurls obscenities at Senate Democrats, they say “thank you.� In the last election, George W. Bush called John Kerry a coward, a liar, a flip- flopper and a war criminal; Kerry got so incensed that he nearly fell off his windsurfer. It’s bad when the person in your party with the most testosterone is named Teresa.

Therefore, as a solution, I would like to suggest that as a national policy we encourage the reestablishment of the Soviet Union. Sure, it was an evil empire, but at least it kept the GOP busy. Who has time for gay marriage, activist judges or brain-dead bulimics when you’ve got a real boogeyman to freak out about? And so the next time they want to go on a bizarre rant about godless pinkos and socialist filth, they can aim it at the Politburo, and give Hollywood a break.