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The sky is falling on House Republicans and there is no sign of it letting up.Let the hunt for scapegoats commence! The Republican Party's professional apologists will scour around for excuses, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush presidency has been a political failure.
The GOP loss in Mississippi’s special election Tuesday is the strongest sign yet that the Republican Party is in shambles. And while some Republicans see a light at the end of thetunnel, that light more likely represents the Democratic train that is primed to mow down more Republicans in November.
The third straight House special election loss in three conservative districts this year is a clear indication that the GOP brand is turning off voters and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is in disarray.
Republicans lost 31 House seats and six Senate seats in the 2006 mid-term elections, and the GOP's grand poobahs tried to ignore the significance of their defeat.
One of the big reasons for the 2006 disaster was that John McCain's amnesty bill alienated many blue-collar voters who had been voting Republican in recent elections. Yet not only did McCain try to pass amnesty again in 2007, but then the Republican Party nominated the La Raza-loving author of this anti-American legislation as its 2008 presidential candidate.
It was President Bush himself who, in January 2004, proposed guest-worker status and amnesty for "undocument workers." In his second term, Bush pressured Republicans in Congress to support such legislation. No doubt other factors are involved in the collapse of the GOP coalition, but it's imp0ssible to ignore the role of Bush, McCain and amnesty in this disaster.
Some of my conservative friends are engaged in a "rally 'round the GOP nominee" effort, and their motives I won't impugn. It seems to me, however, given the mounting evidence that Republicans are doomed to defeat in November, that the smart thing for conservatives to do would be to get as far away as possible from this impending disaster.
On Nov. 5, when there's nothing left of the Republican Party but a smoldering crater, you want to be in a position to say, "I told you so."
UPDATE: Dad29 likes my line from yesterday:
Conservatives are like a battered wife in an abusive relationship with the GOP, except that we can't even get a restraining order.I think my obstreperous attitude toward the Republican elite my be rooted in my experiences as an ex-Democrat. I was born and raised a yellow-dog Democrat and remained fiercely loyal to the party long after many of my friends and neighbors had become "Reagan Democrats." (To give you an idea of what a hard-core partisan I was, I voted for Mondale in '84 -- in Georgia, a state where Reagan got 60% of the vote.)
For years, I gritted my teeth and put up with the idiotic liberals who kept bringing disaster on the Democrats. I didn't even bother to vote in 1988. And then in 1992, along came Bill Clinton, a Southern governor who at least made an effort to distance himself from the Dukakis/Cranston wing of the party. Clinton fooled me so completely that I became an enthusiastic supporter --bumper stickers on the back of my car, the whole deal.
Fool me once, as they say. The three most significant initiatives of the Clinton administration were: (a) gays in the military, (b) socialized medicine, and (c) the bogus "assault weapons" ban. You may say I'm ignoring other major Clinton initiatives, but these were the most significant to me, in that I was 100% against them.
I had voted for a "Sam Nunn Democrat," and had gotten a San Francisco Democrat instead. The "assault weapons" ban was the real deal-breaker. My reaction could be summed up in four words: F--- you, Democratic Party.
By 1996, I'd swung so far to the right that I couldn't bring myself to vote for that mushy middle-of-the-road sellout Bob Dole, the "Senator From Archer Daniels Midland" whom Newt Gingrich once dubbed "the tax collector for the welfare state." In 1996, I voted for Harry Browne.
Having been screwed, blued and tattooed by the Democrats, I'm now intensely skeptical of those conservatives who urge me to act on motives of Republican partisan loyalty, despite every evidence that the GOP has nothing but contempt for its conservative supporters.
UPDATE II: Philip Klein of The American Spectator dubs John McCain "the only electable candidate in [the GOP] once Rudy Giuliani's post-9/11 popularity vanished," causing me to register my astonishment. That GOP Kool-Aid must be powerful stuff.
P.S.: So far as I know, the term "pre-mortem" was coined in October 2006. With all the gloomy GOP omens this year I say, why wait until October?
I have asked you several times questions that have this question as a root purpose: What possible good can come from electing Barack Obama to the presidency?
ReplyDeleteCan't you see that all the examples you have given over quite a few posts where conservatives stayed home or voted for a third party candidate have had disastrous results?
In 1992, the combination of conservative ire at Bush41 and the candidacy of Perot elected Clinton. Here I plead guilty to the things you state in this entry: I was a Democrat, won over by Reagan, and voted for Clinton in response to Bush41's "no new taxes" pledge breaking and the 1989 anti-gun package.
How did that work out again? Oh, yeah... Narrowly averted tax disaster in the form of Hillary Healthcare a new, more odious Clinton anti-gun package in 1994.
Having learned my lesson, I voted for Bob Dole in 1996, left the Democrat party in 97-98, and joined the GOP in 1999.
In 2006 I stayed home with a LOT of other conservatives. What did that get us? SanFranNan Pelosi running the House and Harry Reid running the Senate. As we go to the polls two years later, the GOP has been seriously damaged not only by poor decisions, but by our abandoning of the GOP, good parts as well as bad.
It seem to me, as a fellow former Democrat who is now a conservative Republican, that your "medicine" is worse than the disease.
And no, you don't get the "told ya" position. That is reserved for those who have a legitimate solution and who have clearly presented it. In fact, in response to your entry here and others of the same tone, it is the position of those who continue to pull the GOP lever that can say to you, and to me in 1992 and 2006, "Told ya!"