Text 8450, 100 rader
Skriven 2008-11-29 07:56:00 av Dave Drum (1:124/311)
Ärende: GOP Viewpoint: We Got The
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We Got The Thumping We Deserve

by Rod Dreher

November 4, 2008 · Barack Obama's smashing triumph is a victory for the idea
that Not Being a Republican is a grand and glorious thing.

That's not to take anything away from the magnitude of his win or the
excellence of his campaign, with its distinctly Reaganesque panache. I mean, I
am a Republican, and I've had it with my side, who got the thumping we deserve.
And all credit to the president-elect for magnanimously reaching out to us
bruised and battered conservatives in his victory address, quoting Abraham
Lincoln's hauntingly beautiful line, "We are not enemies, but friends." Yep,
he's my president too. And I'm fine with that.

Like Sen. John McCain said in his extraordinarily gracious concession speech —
tragically, the best speech of his campaign — electing our first
African-American president is a great thing for America. In the 1920s, the Ku
Klux Klan was a part of mainstream life here in Dallas; on Tuesday night,
Barack Obama carried Dallas County. It wasn't even close.

Unlike Ronald Reagan in 1980, though, Obama didn't run on an ideologically
distinct platform — which makes it hard to claim his victory as a mandate for a
new era of vigorous liberalism.

Think about it: the most left-wing presidential candidate since George McGovern
ran on tax cuts! Yes, he was against the war, but he did not campaign on taking
U.S. foreign policy in a dramatic new direction — he has been as hawkish as
John McCain on Russia, for example — nor did he stump for bold new social
initiatives. Nor did he propose an audacious new philosophical approach to
governing, unless you consider basic competence to be revolutionary (on the
other hand, given the Bush administration's record, I concede the point).

This election represents not an affirmative embrace of neoliberalism but rather
a repudiation of the Republican Party and a certain kind of conservatism. It's
important for the left to recognize this in order to avoid the temptation to
overreach in the heady Democratic days to come. One-party government didn't
work out so well for the Republicans during the Bush years — and going further
back, Bill Clinton's misreading of the meaning of his 1992 victory caused him
to make several key political errors that Democrats paid dearly for in the 1994
midterm election. To be sure, Obama has an opening now to move the country to
the left, but it's not clear that that's where we want to go.

That said, the Obama Democrats' greatest ally will almost certainly be the
addled Republican Party, which will be wandering around for some time like a
google-eyed Wile E. Coyote after he's had an anvil dropped on his head. The
recriminations on the right will make the Night of the Long Knives look like a
knitting-needle ticklefest.

The civil war among conservatives will be between an enraged rump of die-hard
knotheads and a disparate group of reformers. The knotheads believe that
Obama's victory came thanks to the treason of some conservative intellectual
elites and McCain's failure to be more like Reagan, whatever that means 20
years after the Gipper left the White House. Sarah Palin is the standard-bearer
for the talk-radio faction within knotheadism, and Mitt Romney will emerge as
the GOP establishment's last stand.

The reformers — well, they believe a lot of things, but most of all they
believe that the GOP is intellectually exhausted and has to chart a new path to
remain politically viable. But where should the party go? There is no clear
answer — especially because in many ways the Bush presidency was supposed to be
the center-right evolution away from doctrinaire Reaganism. But at least this
bunch is asking hard questions instead of retreating into a self-justifying
revanchism. Unfortunately, if the Tory party's example is any indication of the
GOP's future, it will be years before the reformers find their David Cameron.

Of course, nobody knows anything. Four years ago, we were all contemplating the
possibility of Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority, and now look. History
has both political parties by the napes of their necks, and its all either will
be able to do simply to hang on for a rough ride. Obama will be restrained in
pursuing an activist agenda by the lack of money and the lack of military. And
nobody knows yet how bad the recession is going to be. Neither Obama nor McCain
gave any indication that he understands the magnitude of the economic crisis
overtaking America.

Still, if I were a betting man, I'd put money on a Barack Obama-Bobby Jindal
match in 2012. If Obama is the Democrats' Reagan, then the Louisiana reform
governor has the potential to be both the Republicans' Bill Clinton — in that
he could revive a defeated and demoralized party — and its Barack Obama, in
that he is young, brilliant and widely appealing. Besides, there simply aren't
any other Republicans left standing today who could unite the GOP's shards
after this epic smashing.

One last melancholy thought: The modern conservative movement began with the
decisive loss of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater in his 1964 presidential race.
And it ends with the decisive loss in the 2008 presidential race of the
Arizonan who holds Goldwater's Senate seat. But also a hopeful thought,
certainly for Democrats, but maybe too for Republicans on down the line: If you
had to pick a time and place when modern liberalism destroyed itself, it would
be Chicago's Grant Park in 1968, in the police riots accompanying the
Democratic National Convention. That would be the same place where
neoliberalism, of a sort, was reborn last night with Barack Obama's victory
speech. The wheel of history keeps on turning.

Rod Dreher is a columnist and online editorial page editor for The Dallas
Morning News

... George III - most corrupt President ever for the United States of America
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