Losing the Generation
The foolish mis-leading of the Republican Party by Karl Rove's tactical blunders and George Bush's incurious political philosophy has damaged the party's chances for a generation to come. This New York Post editorial succinctly indicts a myopic strategy that, sure enough, pleases some parts of a plurality coalition a little, while disappointing any principled conservative or libertarian worthy of the name:
I'm not sure I can do it. And, if it weren't for the War on Terror, I know few for whom it would even be a question.The Republican Party, under Bush, has stopped standing for fiscal responsibility and small government (see "Medicare bill"), it has stopped standing for free trade (see "steel tariffs") and it has stopped standing for free speech (see "campaign-finance reform").
So, what's left?
George Bush, always something of a Embarassment Primogeniture for the party, and the creation from whole cloth of Campaign Finance "Reform" (ah, the unitended consequences! When political campaigns can not accept big donations, they must accept thousands (millions?) of small ones. In order to extract multitudes of small donations from the populace, one must have a sufficiently large political organization and donor list at one's beck. Such organizations, it turns out, are alarmingly heritable.) has imposed upon our party a concoction of blights the individual damage of which we are only just beginning to see. And the larger, more comprehensive damage he has done to our ability to assert ourselves as the party of free minds and free markets, is depressingly abiding.
