There was a time when the Democratic and Republican parties were both mainstream parties. There was a general consensus on foreign policy and differences on domestic policy.
As a case in point, as I watch the political sniping between the current and past presidential administrations over Guantanamo and torture, I remember readng that Richard Nixon came to the defense of the Kennedy Administration over tha failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
What a different time that was. In the 1960’s the Democratic Party basically lost its moorings and became a party with strong radical elements while the Republican Party became the party of main street values.
For forty years this trajectory continued until 2000 when the Bush administration came to power and things started to shift to the radical elements of the GOP. George W. Bush, a man who on a deep mental-familial level wanted to make up for what radical conservatives felt was the failings of his father George H. W. Bush who was not conservative enough for them.
W also had a complicit Republican Congress that went along with his vast expansions of government and their wasteful spending. These facts muddied the waters of conservatism.
Then we inject a strong radical element into foreign policy with George W. Bush’s freedom agenda wasting America’s blood and treasure. Add to that the radical domestic agenda of social conservatives and it is no wonder that the main stream of American public thought has rejected the radical elements of the Republican Party.
In other words conservatism has become a freak show. You know it, I know it, and it will be years before some candidate for national or state wide office has the equivalent of Bill Clinton’s Sister Soulja moment and calls out of the radical freak show of conservatism.
Going forward, the Republican party might make some narrow gains in the 2010 or 2012 election cycle. As we have seen this year even the stock market can come back a little. But this cycle will take years to play out.
Just as the Democratic Party has become a center left party the Republican Party needs to move back to be a center right party if it does not want to spend a decade or two in the wilderness.
Frankly radical conservatives are in such control of the Republican Party that I cannot see things changing any time soon. But I am open to surprises or miracles.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Brie,
Renegade is right. We have been waiting for years for that to happen and it just gets worse. It will take many years for the republicans to recover. I don’t see that happening any time soon. The coalition that created so many GOP victories is broken very badly and I don’t see how it will get back on track, My gut feeling is a minumum is 4 years out of power max 8 to 10 years.
Tough medicine. Of course the democrats could fall on their swords and things can change but people are not going to forget the failed Bush Administration any time soon.
Forget, please, “conservatism.” It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.
I hope you’re wrong…I hope that the Republican party returns to its roots and registered Republicans throughout the state, who are primarily center right, push the party back to the center.