Thursday, January 31, 2008

Republicans in ’08: The Party’s Over

When I was in high school I can remember asking a teacher of mine which he thought was more likely to appear: a second undefeated NFL team or a prominent third political party in America. With the 18-0 New England Patriots playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday and with Senator John McCain driving the final nail into the Republicans’ coffin, there’s a good chance we’ll get to see at least one by week’s end. Needless to say, this has a few conservatives wondering how they got where they are now. How exactly a once mighty party went from controlling just about everything as recently as two years ago to getting tired of winning elections and throwing its most loyal base of voters to the trash heap. To make a long post short, the two are strongly correlated.

It is said that while success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan. In this case, however, there are enough potential patriarchs of this bastardization of the Republican Party to fill Maury Povich’s studio. Consider if you will three Republican Congresses which spent like drunken sailors who had just been given $1,000 FEMA debit cards. Or a stubborn curmudgeon of a Defense Secretary who wasn’t given his walking papers until the day after 30 Republican Congressmen and six Republican Senators were given theirs. Or perhaps a hermit Vice President, who not only redefined the nature of the office but became his own branch of government as well. Or, yes, the guy at the top: the son of a great squanderer of political inheritance who more than lived up to the family legacy while in the process trying the patience and the intelligence of even the fiercest of party stalwarts, like yours truly. Personally, it will be a championship-celebrating day in Cleveland before I forgive George Walker Bush for pissing away the permanent Republican majority we were promised in 2004.

There were other events and issues which transcend the baffling actions of incompetent men. Hurricane Katrina and a freakishly-unstable economy seemed to catch the administration by surprise, and it was wholly unable to deal with them. The war certainly didn’t help the Republican cause, and neither did waiting to take the ferry across only after all the oxen had drowned. Meanwhile, the Mexican border quickly turned in to the GOP’s Meech Lake, with the volatile issue of immigration tearing the party in two and playing Pac Man to their electoral fortunes. While the Republican establishment desperately clings to one amnesty after another in the hope of courting millions of Hispanic voters, the strongly conservative base seems ready to party like it’s 1836. Indeed, there hasn’t been this much division between the Republican National Committee and the “loud folks” who do the voting since an unelected RINO from Michigan was fighting the base (and a popular former Governor of California) for his first full term.

We Republicans were promised a three-ring circus for our first genuinely open primary season in decades, and in the end it was the party establishment (along with the mainstream media and several thousand crossover Democrats) who made the decision for us. McCain’s Double-Talk Express must make frequent stops to the land of make believe as he pretends to be both a conservative and the agent of change America seems so desperate for. After all, he does have the support of a commanding 36% of the Republican electorate. In truth, however, when not playing up his war record like a Massachusetts Democrat, McCain has spent his entire career frustrating, stymieing, insulting, cussing, betraying, dismantling, and outright lying about his fellow conservatives. After all, it was never Democrats whom McCain called “an a-hole” or “a f*cking jerk.” Conservatives know full well this member of the Keating Five Scandal (you’ll hear all about that sometime between Labor Day and Halloween) is part of the problem in Washington, not part of the solution. McCain’s ascendancy fits well with the epic and monumental collapse of one Rudolph Giuliani. America’s Mayor went from national frontrunner to complete washout in less than a year. Quite frankly, a team of New Yorkers hasn’t performed this badly in the State of Florida since the 2003 World Series. In short, his choke for the ages is like the New York Mets, Portland Trail Blazers, and Phil Mickelson put together- a number-one ranked golfer who skipped the preliminary tournaments and failed to make the cut at Augusta National.

McCain’s victory in Florida established him as the clear frontrunner if not the inevitable nominee of the Republican Party on Tuesday, and while the New York Times (and millions of fired up Democrats) couldn’t be happier, conservatives are trying their best to stay away from sharp objects, high windows, and bridges. The decimation of the Republicans as a national party will almost certainly be completed this November with McCain at the top of the ticket and Republican Senators and Congressmen retiring in droves. To say John McCain- who served in Vietnam- doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning is perhaps a bit harsh. Instead, it would be more accurate to say the 6-14 Oregon State Beavers have as much chance of winning the college basketball championships this March. The Democrats might have an equally tough time uniting conservatives for McCain in a race the base will see as between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Voting for the RNC-approved wolf in sheep’s clothing out of fear of a supposedly more-vicious wolf doesn’t seem to make much sense.

The Republican Party had a real chance to not only learn from the mistakes of the last seven years but to recapture the conservative base and the tried and true ideals of truth, justice, and limited government that swept them to office so many times before. Instead, the Republican National Committee seems content to watch their treasuries dry up, their once-enthusiastic if not fanatical base continue to grow alienated, and their candidates for higher office searching the want ads for post-November work. In the meantime, the “loud folks,” as Senator Lindsey Graham calls them, the “nativists,” as George Bush refers to them, the lion’s share of the 62 million voters who gave the Republican Party its greatest electoral victory (and probably its last for quite some time) will be right here waiting for you to return. If you ever get tired of becoming the coyote to the Democrats’ road runner in the next eight to twenty-four years, let us know. We conservatives will be happy to welcome you home with open arms and open wallets when you feel you need us again. Until then, as it was said Tuesday night on FreeRepublic.com, “John McCain can go to hell . . . and take the GOP with him.”

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