http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
Peggy Noonan
The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The
Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting,
they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will
leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then
hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see
it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.
The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate
light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in
the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.
The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans
Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing
the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first
thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought:
Most party leaders in Wa****ngton are stupid – detached, played out, stuck
in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or
'94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics
especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came
back to Alger Hiss.
They are also – Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers – successful,
well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in '86, how
government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make
a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence
detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're
safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way.
Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven
years in the White House. But they've publicly sup****ted it so long they
think they . . . sup****t it. They get confused. Late at night they toss
and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in
McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what
those thoughts imply.
And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have
the country, the troops will rally in the fall.
"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who
is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York
Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our
issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be
conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be
conservative every day.
The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through
'08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running
for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for
anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers.
All true enough!
But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately,
that there is another truth. "Members and pundits . . . fail to
understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas
prices, the economy, foreclosures," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a
20-page memo to House GOP leaders.
The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a
mountain." Analyses of its predicament reflect an "investment in the Bush
presidency," but "the public has just moved so far past that." "Our
leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case
of White House-itis." Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in
terms of communications: "He can't articulate. The only asset we have now
is the big microphone, and he swallowed it." The party, said Mr. Davis,
must admit its predicament, act independently of the White House, and
force Democrats to define themselves. "They should have some owner****p
for what's going on. They control the budget. They pay no price. . . .
Obama has all happy talk, but it's from 30,000 feet. Energy, immigration,
what is he gonna do?"
* * *
Could the party pivot from the president? I spoke this week to Clarke
Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent
Republicanism in the South. When he started out, in the 1950s, there were
no Republicans in his state. The solid south was solidly Democratic, and
Sen. James O. Eastland was thumping the breast pocket of his suit, vowing
that civil rights legislation would never leave it. "We're going to build
a two-party system in the south," Mr. Reed said. He helped create "the
illusion of Southern power" as a friend put it, with the creation of the
Southern Republican Chairman's Association. "If you build it they will
come." They did.
There are always "lots of excuses," Mr. Reed said of the special-election
loss. Poor candidate, local factors. "Having said all that," he
continued, "let's just face it: It's not a good time." He meant to be a
Republican. "They brought Cheney in, and that was a mistake." He cited "a
disenchantment with the generic Republican label, which we always thought
was the Good Housekeeping seal."
What's behind it? "American people just won't take a long war. Just –
name me a war, even in a pro-military state like this. It's overall
disappointment. It's national. No leader****p, adrift. Things haven't
worked." The future lies in rebuilding locally, not being "distracted" by
Wa****ngton.
Is the Republican solid South over?
"Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "I eat lunch every day at Buck's Cafe. Obama's
picture is all over the wall."
How to come back? "The basic old conservative principles haven't changed.
We got distracted by Wa****ngton, we got distracted from having good
county organizations."
Should the party attempt to break with Mr. Bush? Mr. Reed said he
sup****ts the president. And then he said, simply, "We're past that."
We're past that time.
Mr. Reed said he was "short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic." He
has seen a lot of history. "After Goldwater in '64 we said, 'Let's get
practical.' So we got ol' Dick. We got through Watergate. Been through a
lot. We've had success a long time."
Throughout the interview this was a Reed refrain: "We got through that."
We got through Watergate and Vietnam and changes large and small.
He was holding high the flag, but his refrain implicitly compared the
current moment to disaster.
What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what
didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could
have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking
behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and
the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been
honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.
Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has
the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious
reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the
president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they
wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the
language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are
marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about
ideas. And not serious about leader****p, only follower****p.
This is and will be the great challenge for John McCain: The Democratic
argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory
will yield nothing more or less than George Bush's third term.
That is going to be powerful, and it is going to get out the vote. And
not for Republicans.
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It's all very sad, isn't it ?
<snicker>
--
AW
<small but dangerous>
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