Uninspired leadership

This is a truly stunning article from Roll Call this morning. As Congress reconvenes this week, the House and Senate GOP caucuses will be huddling separately to compile their game plans for the coming congressional session.

On the House side of the Capitol, Roll Call reports that John Boehner is preparing to tough message for his colleagues as they gather this week:

Meanwhile, House GOP leaders will make earmark reform a major topic of discussion at their retreat in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., later this week.

“There will be a conference-wide discussion about the earmark process both on the appropriations side and the authorization and tax side,” Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week at a press conference. “And I’m hopeful that we as a conference will be able to come to a position about what we would do about fixing the earmark process.”

Republicans are likely to discuss a variety of options for changing the process and reining in wasteful spending. Possible ideas range from banning earmarks outright to issuing a moratorium on the practice while it is studied to trying to develop a process that would help weed out earmarks that are superfluous.

The debate over which direction the party goes is a touchy subject since Members rely on bringing funds back to their districts for projects, and their constituents have come to expect it.

But Boehner is expected to make the case that substantive earmark reform, and the development of a corresponding policy, has to be a centerpiece of the GOP’s effort to regain its fiscal conservative posture.

The earmark discussion is part of a larger effort — spearheaded by Boehner — to rebrand a party that in many ways is still reeling from its loss of power following the 2006 elections.

On the House side, Republicans appear to be honing a message that Washington is broken and they need to show voters that they are the party that can fix it.

“Reforming earmarks is at the top of the list of fixing a broken Washington,” said one GOP aide, telegraphing what is likely to be a major theme coming out of the retreat.

That sounds about right. It is encouraging to see House leadership getting serious about a problem that plagued this party with the likes of Jack Abramoff. So what will the Senators be talking about? Not pork or corruption, that's for sure.

According to Roll Call, the Senate GOP's newly elected message man Lamar Alexander will focus his presentation at tomorrow's retreat on the need to cooperate with Democrats. Earmarks and corruption, two of the main reasons these guys are in the minority, are not on the agenda, but cooperating with Harry Reid is. Alexander is convinced that voters are tired of partisanship (true) and that if Republicans roll over and cooperate with liberal in Congress, Republicans will win the approval of the voter and retake the Senate.

Hmmm...forgive me if I disagree. This is a tailor-made strategy to stay in the minority for the foreseeable future.