Redstate

By MNRick Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It seems dependably certain that Republicans are going to lose seats in both houses of Congress in November. How many is certainly the subject of considerable scrutiny and speculation, with the explanations for an unfavorable Decision '06 boiling down to four themes:

• Iraq. However clear the understanding of the true nature of the direct terrorist threats against this nation, Iraq continues to drag on, month after month, with both the definition of 'won' and our achievement of it seeming, if anything, more distant as time passes. GWB wagered his presidency not on terrorism but on Iraq. It is clear that he lost, and just as elections have consequences for the judiciary, miserably failed military judgments which cost us thousands of young lives and hundreds of billions of dollars have serious consequences as well.
• Impotency as the controlling party. What true victories or memorable successes can be numbered as Republican achievements over the last six years ? I can think of only two, both of which are easily parried by the opposition.. a strong economy (bloated with an ever-increasing debt) and the lack of any direct terrorist success against us since 9/11 (Iraq, Iraq and Iraq). Toss in a whole lot of nothing on immigration reform and across-the-board failures handling Katrina and impotent sounds about right to me.
• Disloyalty to conservatism as the controlling party. What an opportunity lost: six years of firm White House and capitol hill control to downsize government and taxation, empower small business and ratchet down the collectivist social mentality that has run rampant in D.C. since FDR. Instead we get explosive government growth not seen since Truman, token tax relief and Medicare Prescription Drugs. If there is principled conservatism in Washington, beyond the lonesome chatter of the occasional rogue whose voice is generally regarded as an outsider, I'd like to see it.
• Ethics screw-ups. Start with Tom DeLay and complete your own list of heroes who've done their bit to discredit the party as a principled, trustworthy governing majority. Like it or not the light shines brighter on those in charge. The standards have to be higher. They haven't been.

The only feature of the political landscape keeping this cycle from '94 upheaval scale is the ideological catastrophe that continues to brew for the Democrats and their utter inability to do anything about it. Welfare state, social equality, big labor, government-as-big-brother politics is finished. We can thank Rush and the thousands of other conservative voices which have come alive in the last two decades for shining the light of day on core Democratic principles for the abyssmal failures that they are. Unless you are from someplace really blue there is no longer a reasonable expectation of success running as a classic Democrat. Their core ideology is no longer electable on its own. Thus there is no consensus platform, no unified (including party moderates) base and a very worried party. That majority control is even a horse race in an ideological environment such as this is an unshakable testament to the fact that the wrong Republicans are in charge and in office for us.

So in 65 days America will provide its report card on an utterly undistinguished 6 years of control for Republicans. Honesty demands the admission that we have done nothing to merit a return to the majority. We're going to lose because we deserve to lose. Here's hoping that the distaste of defeat, along with the nauseating specter of Speaker Pelosi and/or Majority Leader Reid will be enough to convince Republican leadership to replace the current crop of partisan politicians with some principled statesmen. If a couple of years in the wilderness is what it takes to bring home that realization, so be it.