David Brooks, behind the firewall, makes a few points that I have been making for a while. Do the Republicans have any sense of self-preservation? Evidently not.
At the University of Chicago there’s a group of scholars who are members of what is called the Rational Expectations school of economics. They believe human beings tend to anticipate unpleasant future events and seek in advance to avoid them. Their teachings do not apply to the Republican Party.
Brooks then details a familiar narrative about the 2006 midterms, etc. Then he gets to the meat of the problem.
On Capitol Hill, there is a strange passivity in Republican ranks. Republicans are privately disgusted with how President Bush has led their party and the nation, but they don’t publicly offer any alternatives. They just follow sullenly along…
They are like people quietly marching to their doom.
What’s interesting about Brooks’ column is that he attempts to explain why.
First:
Anybody who offers unorthodox tax policies gets whacked by the Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform. Anybody who offers unorthodox social policies gets whacked by James Dobson.
Second:
Being a good conservative now means sticking together with other conservatives, not thinking new and adventurous thoughts. Those who stray from the reservation are accused of selling out to the mainstream media by the guardians of conservative correctness.
Third:
Conservatives have allowed a simplistic view of Ronald Reagan to define the sacred parameters of thought. Reagan himself was flexible, unorthodox and creative. But conservatives have created a mythical, rigid Reagan, and any deviation from that is considered unholy.
And fourth:
Republican morale has been brutalized by the Iraq war and the party’s decline. This state of emotional pain is not conducive to risk-taking and free and open debate.
Brooks concludes by saying something about the GOP that can be applied with even greater accuracy to the President and Vice-President and their war in Iraq.
In sum, Republicans know they need to change, but they have closed off all the avenues for change.
By defining the war in Iraq as the defining struggle of our generation, and by defining any withdrawal from Iraq as a defeat that will have catastrophic consequences for our nation, and by rejecting the collective wisdom of the Baker-Hamilton group…the GOP has driven itself over a cliff.
The people are concerned about Iraq and the consequences of chaos and instability in the Middle East. But they also know that there would be a draft, and tax increases to pay for a total national effort, if the status of Iraq were truly as important as it is portrayed by Republican fire-breathers.
The GOP/administration are like the boy who cried wolf. Even if there is a real wolf lurking out there, the people stopped listening to false alarms a long time ago.
But, from a political perspective, the most interesting thing is precisely this total lack of any instinct for self-preservation we are seeing from congressional Republicans. Their collective tolerance for the continued service of Alberto Gonzales is merely the most visible manifestation of a greater problem.
If they were sensible they would get out in front of the problem and admit that we cannot make any progress on fixing our problem in Iraq until we have new leadership and that we can’t wait until 2009. If the Republicans force us to wait until 2009, there may be very few Republicans in office when the 111th congress take their seats.
And, as a Democrat, I admit that this is good for my party. But it is not good for the country. Republicans should save themselves by admitting what a growing majority of Americans already know: our current leadership is unfit for office.