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A Republican Recovery?
 In 1932, when
most Americans feared the wolf at
the door, the Democrats swept to a tremendous electoral victory, capturing
the presidency and both houses of Congress. It was more than a momentary
triumph; the once-mighty Republicans were nearly wiped
out  and
the Democrats remained dominant for the next generation.
Today the
country is almost unrecognizably different. The Federal Government has
become the wolf at the door. The Republicans have taken the place of the
Democrats as the party of big government, and another electoral watershed
looms.
How lopsided is
it going to be?
That seems to
be the only question about next month’s elections. The general feeling
is that this is probably not going to be a continuation of the Republican
Revolution. One symptom is that today, if you ask a candidate, “Are
you now, or have you ever been, a Republican?” he may reply with an
evasive mumble. If he is exceptionally brave he may say yes, but he is more
likely to own up to being a member of al-Qaeda, which currently enjoys higher
approval ratings. Only Karl Rove is still managing to feign optimism.
The Bush
administration has announced that it is dropping the slogan Stay the
course after the phrase provoked curses and catcalls from several
focus groups. Next week President Bush himself is expected to change his
name.
Why not? The
administration has already overhauled its entire vocabulary, dropping such
jaunty trademark expressions as mission accomplished, axis of
evil, and global democratic revolution. It doesn’t want to
remind us of its confident insistence that “the risks of inaction are
greater than the risks of action” and that “the smoking gun
may turn out to be a mushroom cloud.” All these phrases now sound
as passé as Mantovani’s greatest hits.
The Iraq war
has been for Bush what the Depression was for Herbert Hoover. Republicans
who used to cling to his coattails now shun him like a leper’s kiss. He
has brought destruction on them.
Nobody will take
greater satisfaction in the Republicans’ humiliation than the genuine
conservatives who have suffered agonies of frustration for six years as
Bush has usurped and discredited the honorable label of conservatism. He is
more nearly their opposite than their ally; they have little in common with
him. The damage he has done to their cause may be irreparable.
![[Breaker quote for A Republican Recovery? : The GOP's identity crisis]](2006breakers/061026.gif) But
if the Republicans have forfeited
the voters’ trust, the Democrats have hardly earned it. They may well
win a huge victory entirely by default. If they recapture both houses of
Congress, nobody knows what they will do, except to make Bush’s life
miserable. He will still have the veto, and he may have to start using it. He
may even revert to something like the
limited-government conservatism he has so far spurned.
Which brings us
to the only silver lining, if you can call it that, for the Republicans. Given a
little power, the Democrats may reestablish their own unpopularity. However
they may prosper in November, this is not, after all, 1932. They don’t
have the advantage of a Great Depression or a leader like Franklin D.
Roosevelt to exploit the situation. Their only theme is negative: they are not
the Republicans.
This means that
any gains they make will probably be temporary and perishable. Bush is
beyond recovery, but the Republicans, if they abandon him, will not be. They
will get a severe shock from the voters; in fact, they are already bracing for
it. They realize that they have to dissociate themselves from their
disastrous president.
It’s hard
to say what today’s huge and divided electorate wants; in 1932 it was
relatively united in wanting the Depression to end. Today it has no such
simple focus, but it overwhelmingly knows what it doesn’t want:
George W. Bush.
The sooner the
Republicans can rid themselves of Bush — who has made himself the
Democrats’ greatest rallying point since Hoover — the sooner
they can begin their recovery as a reasonably conservative party.
Meanwhile, they
are stuck with this albatross for the next two years. It will be interesting to
see how they deal with such an embarrassment in 2008. They can neither
run on his achievements nor pretend he never happened.
So George W.
Bush’s legacy will be his party’s identity crisis.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2006 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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