I remember the heady days in early 2005 when it appeared that Republicans had a limitless future and the Democrats were the party of burnt toast and rancid eggs. It appeared that there was no way that the recently defeated Democrats would be able to pull their party together in time to challenge for the 2006 mid terms. And while everyone knew Hillary Clinton was preparing for a presidential run, most viewed that prospect with a certain relish, convinced that Mrs. Clinton’s high negatives would make taking her on a relatively simple task. (Most still prefer Hillary today but don’t see the job of beating her quite as easy.)
But if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to political success can often be boobytrapped with the sins of arrogance and overconfidence. If any of us had bothered to think about it seriously in the first months of 2005, we would have discovered precious few truly conservative candidates available to run for president – and none who stood out as real Commander in Chief material. As it turned out, several potential candidates met ignomious ends during the Mid Term Massacre of 2006 while others, like Newt Gingrich, showed little interest in running.
Now, with the continuation of the candidacy of Fred Thompson in question, the brutal truth is hitting home; the GOP standard bearer could very well be John McCain; a candidate with impeccable national security credentials but little else to offer conservatives save a promise that he will be better than his record indicates. The prospect of a McCain candidacy has set off flurry of pledge takers – as in, conservatives taking a pledge to stay home on election day if McCain is the nominee.
Stephen Bainbridge is one of them:
But it’s not just Bush. The deeply corrupt K Street gang discredited the GOP Congressional leadership, who proved to be concerned solely with clinging to power for power’s own sake.God made the people of Israel wander in the desert 40 years so as to remake the Israelis Israelites into a people fit for the tasks ahead. The GOP seriously needs a time out so that it can rethink its role in American democracy. There are a lot of legitimate questions facing the GOP. Do you adhere to the limited government principles of Reagan and Thatcher or do you follow the lead of UK Tory leader David Cameron? As the Economist recently opined, “it seems likely that the Republican Party, as a number of its members are already urging, will have to embrace environmentalism and cuddly economics as the Tories were forced to.â€
Fred Thompson was a more than acceptable Reaganesque conservative who offered the GOP a chance to delay having to face those tough choices. Indeed, to borrow a football metaphor, a Thompson presidency offered the GOP a chance to reload rather than going through the painful process of rebuilding. The other 4 are all so deeply and irredeemably flawed that their presidency likely would be doomed to failure from the outset.
I’m not quite as pessimistic as Stephen for the simple reason I know of too many presidents who were horribly underestimated by their contemporaries who ended up doing very well. Linconln was one. Reagan another. The office itself will have its way with the occupant and the forces of history will shape and be shaped by anyone who sits in The Big Chair. Who is to say how any of those men will perform?
But Bainbridge is correct otherwise. The GOP is a broken party. If the next nominee could win through to victory, they would have the opportunity to place their imprint on the party for years to come. And the chances of a McCain or Romney getting that opportunity chills the bones of conservatives from all factions of the movement.
But I have argued in the past (and despite some moments of weakness) will argue again in the future that voting is a civic responsibility and that if you are mad at Republicans, there are other, more legitimate ways to show your displeasure than sitting home. Voting for the Democratic alternative is an option for some. Voting for a third candidate is another way to protest against the direction the party is taking.
But frankly, I will hold harmless any conservative who wishes to stay at home on election day if John McCain is the nominee. For myself, I don’t know what I will do as far as voting but I know that he will receive no favors from me on this blog. The same would probably be true for Romney as well. My heart just wouldn’t be in promoting the candidacy of a man as changeable as the former center-left governor of Massachussets.
James Joyner has it about right:
Alternatively, I suppose, one could argue that the intellectual base of the party is fine. Rather, its politicians are abandoning principle for expediency in pandering to an electorate that constantly demands more government subsidies. Traditionally, conservative Republicans embraced tax cuts and small government. Now, the movement’s elected leaders, with very few exceptions, embrace tax cuts and big government.Hagiography aside, that trend started with Ronald Reagan. He wanted tax cuts, huge increases in defense spending, and big cuts in domestic spending. He settled for the first two, however, along with massive public debt. It proved to be a very popular platform. Aside from the Ross Perot boomlet in 1992, fiscal responsibility turned out not to be a very salient electoral strategy.
Joyner highlights the biggest challenge of all; how to play an effective scrooge when Santa Claus is so wildly popular. By abandoning fiscal responsibility as a tenet of conservative governance, we have made other conservative values like personal responsibility and self-discipline irrelevant. The American people demand services from government whether it is government’s business to dispense that service or not. What’s more, they still want their children and grandchildren to pay for it judging by how unpopular raising taxes has become.
Conservatives have no credibility in seeking to deny or restrain the people’s appetitite for these benefits simply because our so-called conservative leaders are as eager to play Santa as the liberals. Hence, the disconnect between conservatives and mainstream America is complete. We simply are not believed when conservative candidates talk about small government or individual responsibility. Conservaties in government don’t practice those values. Why should anyone else?
Did Fred Thompson have a chance to turn this around? Joyner points out Thompson’s voting record being not that much different from McCain’s. This may be true but at the same time, I truly believe that Thompson had thought long and hard about changing this relationship between the government and the governed and hit upon a new kind of federalism to bring some balance back to the equation. Whether he could have pushed it through Congress is open to question. But he was basing his candidacy on the principles of Reaganism and federalism – a powerful combination that could have prevailed if the courage to enact it could have been found.
Whether conservatives hold their nose and vote for him or stay at home it will hardly matter in the long run. McCain will not govern as a conservative and will almost surely freeze conservatives out of major policy positions. If this is what Rush Limbaugh and others mean by destroying the party by making it simply a poor echo of the Democrats then count me out. I hardly see a difference between the damage that would be done by a McCain or Obama/Hillary.
Few choices. Fewer options.
6:31 pm
Hey, Rick, can you answer this question? You you tout FDT as a man of seriousness, integrity etc., but here’s what he said in his after-SC speech: US is a country that sacrificed more blood for the cause of freedom than all the other countries combined.
Military casualties of Britain and France in WWII alone are bigger than that of US. Hell, even Yugoslavia lost more soldiers in WWII than US. And regardless of the evils of Stalin’s regime, Russian people’s fight in WWII was largely for freedom. Russian causalities were around 25 times that of US if you only count military deaths and 50 times if you count civilian deaths as well.
American president who could say something like what FDT said there would be a perfect symbol for American ignorance and arrogance. Even the most pro-American foreigner would feel slight contempt for your country after hearing these words.
The question is, what is the use of alienating more of the world by electing someone prone to such distasteful demagoguery? Or would you say that pissing on the graves of the countless soldiers is a minor matter?
6:47 pm
Thus, if you’re a conservative, voting for Hillary or Obama is the wisest because either of them or McCain will infest policy with liberalism. If Hillary/Obama holds the Oval Office the Dems will be blamed for the certain mess. If it’s McCain, the Republicans will be blamed.
If McCain is nominated, all I can say is “GO HILLARY”!
7:17 pm
Lincoln did “very well?”
Other than starting that war that killed 600,000 people, you mean?
Um..yeah, right. I think it was the south that started the war but then I’m not a complete loon like you so I wouldn’t try to change your mind.
Ed.
8:05 pm
I am one of those who would NEVER cast a vote for McCain. His betrayal of his nation in supporting amnesty for illegals is all it takes to wipe away any and all of his national defense bonifides. Any Republican nominee (minus Paul) would act vigerously to defend America in the GWOT. Most of the polls I have seen show that conservatives either already like Romney or would get behind him if Fred were out of the race. That means he would be able to keep the base largely intact in a general election. The same is not true for Huckabee or McCain. Every election ultimately come down to the lesser of all evils. Romney will receive my support, and the longer it takes other conservatives to come around to this the greater the chances of our having McAmnesty as our nominee.
8:28 pm
This is truly a sad day for the GOP and all of us who had such high hopes for Fred. Folks have been asking me (not that I hold overwhelming influence)what they should do now. I wish I could jump up and have a concise answer, but I don’t. I am faced with the task of having to choose second best which is resoundingly obvious in my posture.
At this point, I am focusing on local elections which can have an impact on the Congress. At least that is something here in Illinois.
9:20 pm
Dear Nikolay,
soviets did not sacrifice any of their own blood for freedom. They kept all the land they took from the Nazis. They are also responsible for the very existence of North Korea. A gift that keeps in giving.
As for the election. I Plan on voting for Fred Thompson even if my only choice is to write his name in. At least I will walk out of the voting booth feeling good on election day.
9:44 pm
Um. Britain, France, Yugoslavia and USSR were in it for survival at the most basic, civilian by civilian level. Bit of a difference there.
10:38 pm
The Screw You Guys, I’m Going Home crowd is becoming tiresome. You guys are bigger RINOs than McCain will ever be.
11:31 pm
I don’t want to be overly snarky but why don’t conservatives just take a hike and promote Limbaugh as their standard bearer – at least they could finally be standing on principle rather than the bullying tactics they have used on moderates.
Conservatives seem to want respect but refuse to extend it. Of course this doesn’t characterize all conservatives but a great many of the more vocal ones come across this way.
1:16 am
[...] Grim Choices Confront GOP Published on 22 Jan 2008 in notable. Rick Moran @ Right Wing Nut House: The GOP is a broken party. [...]
2:02 am
I think it is a huge mistake to fall into the comforting trap that ‘democrats will be blamed for the failures of the country while they are at the helm’. The Democrats control the Congress right now. Do you see them shouldering their share of the blame from their constituents? Of course not, whatever the problem- it’s still all Dubya’s fault.
When a Democrat is President, they will use the bully pulpit, something that Bush has rarely done (and done poorly when he tried to). Billy boy used it all the time and his wife will ride all over that thing. Things aren’t going to get better by handing the reigns over to the Democrats. Conservatives will remain the specter. They will still blame us.
The true damage will take a lot longer to surface than the end of Hillary or Obama’s first term. The damage will be deep and it will grow. I can’t say if I’ll be able to stomach voting for Straight Talk or not, it’s not an enticing prospect, but let there be no confusion: America isn’t going to ‘wake up’ under the command of Hillary or Obama.
6:25 am
“Conservatives seem to want respect but refuse to extend it”
This is a primary race, was not aware that Moderates/Independents represented the base of the Republican Party. Secondly, it hard to make such claim when practically everyone is telling Conservatives to just shut up and nominate McCain because he has moderate/independent voters.
If the race is all about ‘gaining moderates and independent voters’ why then do not moderate/independent voters run a candidate who can get the Conservative vote?
How will Moderates/Independents persuade me to choose between a McCain and an Obama?
Like what happened under four years of Jimmy Carter, America will indeed wake-up when their lives are directly affected by the policies they demanded, right now things are too good; give it four years under a high Misery Index and real change will occur.
10:19 am
Thompson was speaking about the personal sacrifices. There’s a difference between country’s politics and that. Most of the Russian anti-Stalinists were still supporting the fight against Hitler. I have a number of relatives that did wonders of heroism in that war, and they were totally anti-soviet people. If you claim that their sacrifices did nothing for the cause of freedom, you piss on their graves.
And USA didn’t enter the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Which was more than 2 years after invasion of Poland, and more than a year after the bombing of London began.
Guys, seriously, do you really believe that the claim that “USA shed more blood for the cause of freedom than all the other countries combined” is anything but the ignorant and offensive BS?
11:35 am
Is there really any difference between left wingers just because of the letter behind their name? The true answer is “no”.
John McCain will not be much different than his Democrat counterparts. What will be different is the reaction of the Republicans in the House and Senate. If a Democrat is elected, it will be acceptable for Republicans to try to block and fight what socialist program a Democrat POTUS is trying to foist on us. Under McCain, true conservatives will become the mavericks and will be considered traitors to their party.
Like the Democrat candidates, no one is looking at McCain’s record and how he has twarted his own party, and their agenda, time after time. He is another “reporting for duty” candidate who is now claiming credit for the surge. Sorry, that dog won’t hunt.
If left of center independents are the ones voting for McCain, what does that tell you? McCain is not carrying the vote of true conservatives. Those of us who buy into the platform of the Republican party are not behind McCain.
But the media is. We are being told to suck it up and just accept a man who considers John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, Mel Martinez and other liberals as his friends. He stands on the podium with Lindsey “we will tell the racists to shut up” Graham and I would go so far as to say that there is a good chance McCain will pick Graham as his running mate. So much for our borders. Odd that the McCain campaign told Martinez to stay at home while he was in Florida. Simply, McCain has to run from his record while he is in a state that is severly affected by illegal immigration.
So go ahead and vote for McCain if he is the GOP nominee. But don’t whine to us true conservatives when he gives you a government that is more oppressive than you could have ever dreamed.
1:31 pm
When one of the RINOS are nominated & become the Republican nominee ,I agree that we should not vote for a democrat, why perpetuate their unacceptable policies. Voting for a third party candidate is a better option but not adequate either. That being said;
Use the wright in option on the ballot. Write your own name in for president; this will send a clear message to the Republican Party’s Leadership, that they are totally out of step with conservative Goals & purpose.
11:07 am
When I hear the talk of RINOS and staying home, I think of all the British Tories all those years ago, who were unhappy with John Major because he wasn’t Margaret Thatcher.
After years of Cool Britannia, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and a country changed beyond recognition, I wonder how they feel now ?
I don’t necessarily like the choices either, but the election’s going forward anyway. To my way of thinking, President McCain is much, much, much preferable to President Hillary or President Obama.
4:10 pm
[...] On the Council side, first place went to Done With Mirrors for Liberal Fascism. In it, Callimachus basically said that he doesn’t like Jonah Goldberg’s book, and then he goes on to rip-roaring discussion about fascism. Since you all know that I really loved Goldberg’s book, I didn’t vote for that post, even though I have to admit that it’s a really good one. Such is the problem of voting with emotions, not intellect (liberals, take heed). There was a seven way tie for second place, with the Watcher breaking the tie and awarding official second place rank to Right Wing Nut House for Grim Choices Confront GOP — a premise and a post with which I entirely agree. [...]