Noonan is right, the GOP is dying

Those who seek to understand why the GOP has lost three special congressional elections in 2008 in supposedly solidly Republican districts should read Peggy Noonan's column in today's edition of The Wall Street Journal.

The former Reagan speechwriter notes a quote from a Republican leader regarding the latest of the losses and adds a sharp retort that gets to the heart of why the party of Goldwater and Reagan is in its death throes as an effective vehicle of conservative reform:

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.(emphasis mine)

Exactly. Republican leaders, including President Bush and most of the party's congressional leaders, have  for years talked the talk of being conservatives, but have hypocritically avoided walking the walk on virtually all the major domestic issues.

Faithful readers of this blog will recall a discussion from a couple years back between the "Tapscottians" and "Geraghtyites," as dubbed by Hugh Hewitt. I've purposely kept quiet on this issue since then out of hope that House Minority Leader John Boehner would somehow succeed in restoring the fighting spirit of the congressional wing of the GOP.

Boehner has made a valiant effort, to be sure, but as I feared the rot is just too deep, as is seen in developments like the failure to secure a GOP consensus on behalf of a no-strings-attached earmark moratorium and the fact more House Republicans voted for the $300 billion Farm Bill giveway than opposed it.

The present era feels very much like the 1974-76 time period, but with one massive difference. The Watergate election of 74 and Jimmy Carter's ascension in 76 were the just desserts of the traditional "moderate" Nixon/Ford wing of the GOP. There was still hope in the smoking ruins , though, because we conservatives knew Reagan was coming back and that the nation would be with him when he won the 1980 nomination.

This is different because there is no Reagan waiting in the wings to rebuild a shattered, demoralized, rightfully discredited party of political hollow men, hacks and lobbyists. John McCain may be elected president in November, but it will only happen by default and it will make absolutely no difference in the long-term future of either the GOP or the conservative movement.

We conservatives hitched our fortunes to the GOP in 1960 because Barry Goldwater was a Republican. We stayed with the party because more often than not it provided a credible possibility of winning elections and gaining opportunities to implement conservative reforms. A for a few years, we actually got some of those reforms passed into law.

But through it all, the voices of the pragmatists were always there, preaching compromise and warning of extremism. During Bush I, they frittered away their Reagan inheritance. Then, after the 94 revolution, many more who claimed to be conservative leaders turned out to be instead willing captives of the Washington Establishment. And they used their office to destroy the party's public credibility.

I'd say they've thoroughly succeeded because after this November the wreckage they will leave behind won't be worth Mr. Garner's proverbial warm bucket of spit.

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