This Opinion Just In…
NEW YORK — Congratulations to Barack Obama, the incoming 44th President of the United States. He soon will fill America’s highest office after a nearly flawless, first-time White House bid. He demonstrates that education, eloquence, and elegance trump lingering racial bias. His staunchly Left-liberal ideas aside, he inspires in many ways. May he govern justly and make every American proud.
Now, what about those who Obama and his supporters vanquished? What the Republican Party badly needs is a Night of the Long Knives.
The GOP has been laid low, thanks to politicians who swapped their principles for power and lost both. As the chief electoral vehicle for conservative and free-market ideas, the Republican Party cannot regain America’s confidence, nor should it, until the guilty have been catapulted into the nearest volcano.
Comrade George W. Bush has spearheaded the most aggressive federal expansion since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a delivery system for socialism, he has been the most effective Trojan Horse since that pine steed rolled into Troy.
When Bush arrived, Washington consumed 18.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Uncle Sam now devours 22.5 percent of the economy, reports Jon Ward in October 19’s Washington Times. “The country has gone from a $128 billion budget surplus when Mr. Bush took office to a deficit of at least $732 billion in fiscal 2009,” Ward writes. “No president since FDR — who offered a New Deal to pull the nation out of the Great Depression and then fought World War II — has presided over as rapid a growth in government when measured as a percentage of the total economy.”
While much of Bush’s spending has funded defense and the War on Terror, most of it vanished into the furnaces of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 Farm Bill, the 2003 Medicare drug entitlement, the 2005 highway bill, the 2006 ethanol mandate, at least 69,341 earmarks, and much, much more. In 2001, Bush launched federal embryonic stem-cell research. By 2008, he added the word “nationalization” to the American vocabulary, and underscored it with nearly $1 trillion in bailouts and Third World-style government ownership stakes in banks and financial houses.
Bush has kept America safe from terror attacks since September 11. The liberations of Afghanistan from bin Ladenism and Iraq from Baathism were vital victories for national security and human rights. Until this year’s mortgage meltdown, his tax cuts fueled robust growth. Good work.
Nevertheless, Bush is the GOP’s Jimmy Carter, a weak bumbler who embarrassed his constituents, betrayed his philosophical movement, sank his party, and eventually surrendered the White House to the opposition, this time led by the Senate’s No. 1 liberal, still in his first term. Bush should retire quietly to Texas, where he can drive his truck, chop wood, and avoid the limelight for the balance of his natural existence.
Bush could use someone to sweep the leaves at his ranch. I nominate Karl Rove. Why on Earth is he always on TV spewing advice? As “the architect” of the oxymoronic Big Government Conservatism, he counseled Bush to solidify power by spending like a Democrat, slapping tariffs on steel, and locking away his veto pen for six years. Under Rove, the administration’s communications efforts made the Tower of Babel sound like a news channel. This would be bad enough if the GOP were unprincipled but in control. Oops! The GOP lost Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. Thanks, Karl.
With few exceptions, Republican congressional leaders cheered this elephantiasis amid an atmosphere of corruption, incompetence, and unaccountability. Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, House GOP chief John Boehner, House Republican whip Roy Blunt, and other failed leaders should go warm the back benches. Senator Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens will become Ted “Jail to Nowhere” Stevens — and not soon enough.
Former Senate GOP leaders Bill Frist and Trent Lott, and top House Republicans Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay have nothing to offer America. They should be left alone to fade quietly into obscurity.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich captured the House from the Democrats, passed the Contract with America, and then bungled his speakership while conducting an extramarital affair with a subordinate during the Clinton impeachment drama. Why do pro-family conservatives, or anyone else, still heed this man?
Instead, Americans should listen to Republicans who courageously advance pro-market principles today. Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn would make outstanding GOP honchos. House Republicans should elevate Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, Jeb Hensarling, and John Shadegg to key positions. Governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal are attractive young reformers with lots to offer through at least 2012. Ditto former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, author of 2008’s best slogan: “Drill, baby, drill!”
John McCain and Sarah Palin campaigned energetically while advocating lower spending and tax cuts. Alas, the bailout fiasco truncated them at their knees. They otherwise might have prevailed, and deserve praise for trying to do the right thing.
Once the GOP’s detritus is dislodged, rebuilding can begin. The best way Republicans can redeem themselves is to ask daily: “What would Reagan do?”
New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
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written by Stuart W. Mirsky , November 07, 2008
This is well said though it's too bad it couldn't have been said sooner.
I think you're somewhat harsh on Bush though, who, after all, faced an unprecedentedly hostile media prepared to undermine him at every turn. Still, it's clear he wasn't up to the task, either of
1) managing his administration's key people (sometimes you have to bang heads which he seems never to have done);
2) leading his fellow party members in Congress (he just sat back passively or joined them in some short-sighted spending efforts intended to steal the Democrats' thunder and win a few of them over -- a hopeless task given the weakness they smelled in his efforts to compromise); and
3) making his case to the American people (he was too tongue tied and, ultimately gunshy, to make adequate use of the presidential bully pulpit).
Certainly he is no Barack Obama who may well be the most charming and intelligent politician to win the White House since JFK. It's too bad we Republicans can't produce men or women of his ilk. We seem to always nominate individuals of lesser gifts. Worse, as you point out, we have tolerated and even supported a whole bevy of "leaders" who haven't been up to the job.
It's probably the fault of rank and file Republicans (and even the larger electorate) who all too often seem satisfied, perhaps even happiest, with people of seeming average capacity. Just look at the vast majority of our politicians in both parties. Still, the Democrats seem to do better in finding and running very smart, very accomplished candidates than we do.
So we need to build our bench and stock it with high quality people (if only GOP voters can bring themselves to go along!) and to get our principles straight again. Bush's efforts to compromise and co-opt the left by supporting spending they would go along with were, in fact, a disaster. Worse, our GOP "leaders" in higher office have consistently let us down or embarrassed us or both.
We tend to forget, I think, that while ours is a two party system, it isn't a given that the Republican Party has to be one of them.
SWM
written by alice Lemos , November 07, 2008
this will happen again. Give Reid, Pelosi and BO a blank check and watch what they will do. The public will not be happy. I am prepared to give them the same leeway that they gave W. - NONE WHATSOEVER. I don't want to hear the word "bipartisan" again. W. actually was a very bipartisan president as is Senator McCain and look what that did for them. When I hear them attacked as Far Rightists, I have to laugh! If only. McCain lost because he did not oppose the bailout.
written by Jay Golub , November 08, 2008
"Certainly he is no Barack Obama who may well be the most charming and intelligent politician to win the White House since JFK."
why does everyone say Obama's so intelligent? I think that phrase has been thrown around too liberally when refering to the President Elect's brain-power. I think it's clear he's "smart," but that's about all i've seen so far.
And for JFK???...come on. I think Nixon was a lot smarter than both of them.
Actually, what is the benefit of "intelligence" in the White House? Was Reagan "intelligent" by these standards? Or is the job of President one that requires skills and talents other than IQ?
I personally don't think a man who can repeat over and over that 95% of the "American people" will get a "tax cut" when only about 43% of American workers effectively pay taxes isn't that bright.
Schrewd. Cunning. Politically savy. Sure...but smart? Brilliant? Intelligent?
Nah...
written by alice Lemos , November 10, 2008
the teleprompter and of course, lobbed one at Nancy Reagan, who is ill. He has her mixed up with Hillary Clinton who used to consult Eleanor Roosevelt during seances.
written by John Callaghan , November 10, 2008
Obama was smart enough to win the election and he'll be just smart enough to win re-election if we're not careful. Who knows what the road ahead holds and how he'll respond to the tests Joe Biden has predicted will come sooner rather than later. Our test, however, is now. It's tough to win elections as the party with better ideas if the people leading and speaking for the party want nothing to do with those ideas. We need to embrace our traditional, old ideals but with new people at the head of the effort. After all, it was only two short years after America elected its first black president (Bubba's words, not mine) that the Contract With America ushered in a new era of conservatism and Republican electoral success. Now, in the days after electing the country's second black president, we must be ready to capitalize on the inevitable buyer's remorse for an electorate who fell in love with the product but didn't read the fine print.
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