It's About Damned Time!

Finally, someone is doing something on a large scale to point out who really caused the financial mess we're all in. Take a look at this dead-on ad from the GOP:

Why does it matter who caused the mess? You may think it's not as important now as simply dealing with it is. While dealing with it is certainly reality, the reason it's important to know who caused it (and why) is because we can't logically expect the same people who caused it to fix it now: Congress, especially Democrats.

There's also another, much more political reason. Rush Limbaugh recently explained why it matters to put the cause squarely where it belongs:

The Democrats have been desperate to find a Republican to pin this on, and they can't. There isn't a Republican anywhere in sight who has any culpability in this. Yet before this is all over and before it's all fixed, the Democrats are going to blame somebody.

McCain is out there saying, "No, we've gotta deal with the blame later. Right now we gotta fix the crisis." Well, the problem for Senator McCain is, he is losing ground in the polls. I don't care why. ... He has to do something to stop it. By "plummeting," he's down six in some polls, down eight in others. We all knew the Drive-Bys were going to destroy Sarah Palin. We all knew they were going to try it. We all know why; she's not one of them.

Well, the problem is he's not hearing the public. He is not aware of the visceral rage and anger out there. It is indeed time to assign blame. We're talking financial destruction on the part of a lot of American families. Somebody's going to get blamed, you can damn well count on it, and the Democrats are not going to wait until January to assign blame. In fact, I'll guarantee you right now you know who's getting the blame for this? McCain! You can see it effervescing out there. "Yeah, McCain came off the campaign trail, big grandstand play. Went there to settle the crisis, nothing happened, had to leave. McCain's ineffective. McCain didn't get anything done."

Now, C. Edmund Wright writes a piece today at the American Thinker called, "Time for McCain to Name Names -- "[S]hort of properly assigning blame to the liberal policies and politicians who are responsible for this mess, the blame will automatically fall to the current Presidential administration and by extension, his party. Right or wrong, that's how our politics play out. McCain simply has no choice now. He will start doing what he claims he loves to do related to government corruption -- naming names..."

"The good news for McCain, should he decide to grasp it, is that the party against which he is (supposed to be) running can easily be pegged with the lion's share of the blame regarding our economic meltdown. There is no doubt that liberal policies on energy and housing have combined to put the country in this situation, and only unwinding these policies will lead the nation out of this problem.

"Naming names properly will name a whole lot of folks with 'D' beside their names. Congress, of course, is now led by the very people who put us into this mess to begin with. If McCain thinks he can thread the needle in a bi-partisan fashion here, he is sadly mistaken. If he does not point out the facts, then his party will take the blame for and he will not win the election. ... As far as he has run from President Bush, he will never get as far away from Bush as Obama can.

I think this makes a whole lot of sense. People are angry about this, and the Democrats have no reluctance to blame Republicans, even though it's backwards from reality. If McCain doesn't actively go out there and set the record straight -- which can easily be done with their own words, as is evidenced by the above ad -- he will automatically take all the blame for it, and he's finished. If, however, he picks this fight and persists with it, the truth will get out there, and the resentment and anger of the American people can be tapped to his benefit.

It most certainly matters who caused it. If your house is on fire, you want to put it out right away, but you don't call in the very same arsonists who set the fire in the first place, do you?

There's my two cents.