Remember those old EF Hutton commercials? ‘When EF Hutton speaks, people listen.’ Well…that’s true for the Republican Party anytime William F. Buckley chimes in on national affairs. Back in February 2006, the earth shook a little when Buckley wrote:
One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.
Today he has a different warning:
The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal…
But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq…
There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.
Buckley created the National Review in 1955 and used it as a platform to build the ideological underpinnings of the modern Republican Party. When he got started the Republicans had the White House (Eisenhower) but they had yet to define themselves in the post-New Deal era. Buckley backed Barry Goldwater in 1964 and was undeterred by the beating the Republicans took as they started to develop their modern ideology. In a real sense, Buckley has been here before. He has seen what it looks like for the Republican Party to virtually cease to exist.
His warning should be heeded not only because Buckley is a perceptive fellow, but because he has a feel for the the slow-moving tectonic shifts in party fortunes. Yet, it is hard to see how the Republican Party’s ‘survival’ is threatened. After the 1964 congressional elections, the Democrats had a 68-32 majority in the Senate, but the Republicans took back the White House four years later and steadily chipped away at the congressional margins. Nevertheless, we might consider a post-2008 Senate with more than 60 Democratic senators…and even wider margins in the House. Under those circumstances the GOP will certainly have to reinvent itself.
There seems to be a growing chorus of Republican intellectuals (and pseudo-intellectuals like David Brooks) that are warning of an imminent catastrophe and wondering why the Republicans are not showing any signs of self-preservation. I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s unfortunate for the country.
