Morning in America

A new lead article in the National Review-- 'The Grim Truth'-- seems a more depressed version of all those 'Okay, we're going to get our asses kicked in this election, but let's try to minimize the impact' articles from last year. It was written by Ramesh Ponnuru (whose name I can't read without remembering his ass-kicking by Jon Stewart last year) and Rich Lowry.

The article's subtitle-- 'Republicans face a calamitous political situation; but they can act to avoid it'-- gets to the crux of what the article hopes to convey to conservatives. However, for me, it contains a few revealing truths about the intellectual dishonesty of Republicans.

Noting how the surge has put the GOP back on offense on the Iraq issue, they write that "If more supporters of the war had been willing to admit that the war was going badly in 2005–6," this could've begun sooner. Yes, if only they hadn't spent the last 4+ years bullshitting the public about the war for pure partisan gain, maybe things wouldn't have gotten as quagmire-y over there. Put your trust in these folks, America!

In the next paragraph, after lamenting the fact that, in the near future, the Supreme Court could have more than 2 out of 9 Justices appointed by a Democrat, they also state that "[Democratic victory] would probably also mean a national health-insurance program that would irrevocably expand government involvement in the economy and American life, and itself make voters less likely to turn toward conservatism in the future." Boy, I wish!

That last line is revealing to me. It doesn't seem to argue (explicitly) that a national health-care system would be bad, though I'm sure they feel it would be. In fact, it notes that it is something that the public would likely be very satisfied with, and that would lead to... and here's the bad part... the public being more likely to have more positive attitudes toward liberal government. And that's really what it's all about, right? It's what the S-CHIP fight was about too. That was a successful program that showed thousands of families (as Medicaid has done for seniors, and low-income families) that dealing with the government for health care $$ rather than the insurance industry is much more reliable and efficient. It threatens the conservative argument that the government that works best is the government that works least, and therefore has to be destroyed.

Right on the merits or not, what mattered was that it is a threat to conservatism.

Finally, they sum up the GOP's problems as resulting from "A mishandled war, coupled with intellectual exhaustion on the domestic front," and add that "It is not just the politicians but conservative voters themselves who are out of touch with the public, stuck in the glory days of the 1980s and not thinking nearly enough about how to make their principles relevant to the concerns of today." I agree completely here. All the more maddening then that the party and base (including the usual writings of Ponnoru and Lowry themselves) have taken previously sane candidates and forced them to the party's extremes to even be considered contenders.

So that advice would be well-followed by conservatives, but it won't be. The 2006 defeat seems only to have made the GOP base nastier and more divisive. That, in turn, has sealed their fate with the general public next year. Maybe a 2008 thumpin' will finally wake the party up and force them into the 21st century. If we're lucky.