GOP Set to Party Like it’s 1993?

While I was in Canada I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to see Meech Lake, some 25 kilometers northwest of Ottawa. This was the site of the now infamous Meech Lake Accord, where Prime Minister Brian Mulroney tried to get Quebec to ratify the Canada Act in 1987. I told him that I wanted to see just where the Progressive Conservative Party ceased to exist as a national party, losing all but two of its 169 seats in the 1993 federal election. He then asked if I wanted to take a trip this summer to the Mexican border, where the Republican Party will cease to exist as a national party.

The more one looks at this ill-fated and even worse-conceived immigration bill the more it tends to resemble the Meech Lake Accord for the Republican Party. Both initially enjoyed the support of more than one party, both were hailed as compromises and the result of intense negotiations, both were geared at securing a certain group in an electoral coalition, and both (ironically) involved immigration in some form. Most importantly, however, both have severely alienated their party’s conservative base. In the case of Canada, this meant that more than half of the electorate switched parties in the 1993 elections. What’s more, the electoral coalition Mulroney built in his 1984 and 1988 landslides collapsed: Quebec nationalists voted for the new Bloc Quebecois while western conservatives chose Preston Manning’s Reform Party. Everyone else voted for the Liberals, who ended up winning big.

While there is as yet no third party or Manning-like figure to play Pac Man to the GOP’s traditional support, they do face a real threat from a rejuvenated Democratic Party. Today’s Democrats are proving what a difference two years can make with everything seemingly going their way. They have two rock star candidates for the presidency, the momentum of the 2006 midterm wave behind them, and a very unpopular lame duck president the Republicans have to stay away from to hope to win. Put simply, at this very early point in the campaign, the race is the Democrats’ to lose.

President Bush and a group of Senate RINOs aren’t making things any easier. To the contrary, they have taken to blaming “loud folks,” (you know, the ones who put them in power back in 2004) for their bill stalling in the Senate. They have taken to name-calling with “nativist” and “racist” being thrown around by Republicans to describe their most dedicated supporters less than three years ago. They have taken to praising Senate Democrats for their efforts in trying to push this bill forward against the efforts of its more conservative members. If the likes of Lindsey Graham think Democrats are so great for their efforts on this bill, then that’s exactly who his constituents might vote for in 2008.

There are even more immediate consequences for this bill, especially if your name is John McCain. While even being associated with the bill should hurt his campaign enough in the eyes of Republican primary voters, being a co-sponsor with Ted Kennedy could sink it. Even McCain admits it’s not a bill he would have written, which again seems curious when he’s a co-sponsor. If there are any beneficiaries on the right side of the aisle its Rudy and Romney for blasting the bill while proving they are more than single-issue candidates like Tom Tancredo.

While things aren’t nearly as dire for the Republicans now as they were for the Progressive Conservatives in 1993, there are some ominous signs on the horizon as well as some common mistakes in the past. President Bush’s second term can most-favorably be described as a series of unfortunate events. The nomination of Harriet Miers, the Charlie-Foxtrot surrounding Hurricane Katrina, and this current immigration bill stand out as some of the more devastating blows to his administration, to say nothing about the Iraq War. All we need now is a Goods and Services Tax to seal the Republicans’ fate.

By contrast, President Bush has no chosen successor as Prime Minister Mulroney did, and that’s probably a good thing. Mulroney’s heir apparent Kim Campbell was so inept a campaigner and her former boss was so unpopular that Liberal activists met her with chants of “Kim, Kim, you’re just like him!” wherever she went. Desperation time set in with the PC’s airing an ad for 24 hours showcasing Jean Chrétien’s Bell’s palsy. The gift of historical hindsight gives the Republicans roughly 18 months to change their fate for the better. The alternative is to be called upon to “bring out yer dead” on election night.