Today’s editorial by STAR-LEDGER (Newark, NJ) columnist Paul M
Posted on November 8, 2007 - Filed Under News
The GOP needs to look in the mirror
It’s been just a bit over seven years since Newt Gingrich left Congress. It seems like an eter nity. For most of the 1990s, the Republican Party was the party of small government, of term limits, of balanced budgets. Now it’s the party of the imperial president, entrenched political hacks and the biggest deficits in
Speaking of mirrors, Newt must have broken one on his way out. This has been seven years’ bad luck for the GOP. George W. Bush is on his way to being possibly the worst president in history, and yesterday his party paid the price.
I’m proud to say “I told you so.” Seven years ago today, I wrote what I hereby claim was the first- ever dump-Bush column. It ran on Nov. 4, 1999, and the headline was “Time to give Bush a shove.”
I realized from the very begin ning that Bush was not a small- government conservative but just another power-mad politician indistinguishable from the great mass of megalomaniacs.
Actually, he wasn’t totally indistinguishable. Most of these guys are pretty glib, but from the begin ning Bush sounded like he wasn’t too bright.
But the Beltway Republicans, eager to regain the White House at any cost, figured Bush offered the best shot. They made a deal with the public. “Trust us,” the party said. “He’s not as dumb as he sounds.”
The public trusted them. Oops. He was indeed as dumb as he sounds. He was chosen to run for only one reason. He could win. That’s also the reason you haven’t heard about term limits or the balanced budget amendment. Both would cost the party power, so both were forgotten.
The result was yesterday’s disaster for the national GOP and for Tom Kean Jr. in
At Kean’s “victory” party last night at the Bridgewater Marriott, the state’s leading Republicans were slow to criticize Bush publicly. But privately they laid the blame for Kean’s defeat at the feet of Bush and his supposed svengali, Karl Rove. Republican pols said that even in deepest suburbia, which should have been Kean country, they were hearing from voters who had supported Bush in 2004 but were now voting for Sen. Robert Menendez to protest the
Exit polls supported this opinion. It wasn’t so long ago that a moderate Republican named Kean — the candidate’s father — was ex pected to do better with the more highly educated voters. But the CNN exit poll showed that college graduates went for Menendez by a 55-42 margin. Those with postgraduate education went for Menendez by a whopping 61-37 margin.
This is what happens when you treat the voters like idiots. And that’s what Rove did in the Bush years.
In those glorious days before Bush, the voters who called themselves conservatives tended to be more educated than the masses, at least if my letters and e-mail were any indication. But the screeds that I receive from Bush supporters these days are masterpieces of illiteracy and misspelling. There are some intelligent people who still back Bush, but they seem to be growing fewer by the moment.
None of this would have happened if Bush had simply stuck to the few simple principles Gingrich pronounced back when Democrats held the White House, especially in the area of foreign policy Gingrich and his fellow Republicans insisted to a man that conservative principles required the
“Mr. President, we are now asking the question: When will our American servicemen and women come home?” Gingrich wrote to
If a Republican were to express that sentiment these days, he’d be accused of treason by Republicans like … well, like Gingrich. The formerly sane and sober conservative has turned into an even more rabid neoconservative than Bush.
It is this 180-degree transformation, I suspect, that is at the root of the GOP debacle. The spin doctors are saying that every two-term president loses support in Congress at the six-year mark of his term. Clinton didn’t. His party gained five seats in the 1998 election. It’s not hard to see why.
As for Bush, he was all ambition with no positions. He never knew what he wanted. And if you don’t know what you want, you’ll get it every time.
Source: http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1162973533123090.xml&coll=1
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