Which Party is That?
By Andy’s back, and he’s pissed.
The Dixiecrats meet again in New York. Now they’re called Republicans.
This is an almost seventeenth century piece of public sectarianism and anti-Catholic bigotry. But it’s now the Republican mainstream.
I think it’s close to unarguable that a Bush second term, regardless of whether you believe it would be good for the country, would be terrible for conservatism as a coherent political philosophy.
These kinds of clashes – when they do not end in clear victory – seem to me to increase bitterness, unrest, unease and resolve little. At best, we are back where we were. At worst, the mess has deepened. Does anyone believe that the administration has a clear idea of how to rescue the situation? I see few signs of candor or clarity.
For a president who never served in Vietnam to get his cronies to lambaste an opponent who actually put his life in danger was, well, breathtakingly bold.
But, being Andy, he also remains confused:
He deserves a chance to repudiate the big-government, nanny-state, sectarian legacy of his first few years and show us where his second term would leave us (and no, I don’t mean Mars). Will he expand freedom at home or continue to curtail it? Will he reveal a strategy in the war that shows he has learned the dangers of waging war unprepared and on the fly? Can he show an ability to grow into more than a deeply polarizing president, more than a man who has clearly failed to win over fully half the country at a time when unity against Jihadist terror is essential? The party of McCain and Giuliani and Schwarzenegger could do that. The party of Santorum and Dobson and DeLay obviously cannot. I fear the battle is already lost, since Bush has caved to the Santorum wing on almost every single domestic issue. But I can still hope, can’t I?
No, Andy, you really can’t. The question is already answered, and has been for a long time. Apparently, you’re one of the last to pick up on it. Good work, I suppose.