3 monkey massacre
For the last decade, ever since the failed implementation of the Contract With America, Republican moderates, Rockefellerites and the mainstream media have preached that in order to maintain its grasp on the electorate, the Republican Party would have to move to the center and establish a Big Tent. This wisdom was embraced and repeated ad nauseam by most of the conservative commentariat, which with only a few exceptions was quite happy to "carry the water" (in Rush Limbaugh's term) for the party's political pragmatists.
This Republican pragmatism came at the price of Republican principles. Conservatism was replaced by compassionate conservatism. Small government was replaced by strong government. National defense was replaced by the defense of Middle Eastern democracy. National sovereignty was replaced by the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Congressional declarations of war were replaced by permission slips from the United Nations. The Department of Education was not closed, but the Department of Heimland Sicherheit was created.
The pragmatists claimed that all of these betrayals of conservative principles were nothing more than the necessary price required to establish a long-term electoral supremacy that would enjoy a life span expected to rival the Democratic Party's 41-year reign from 1954 to 1995.
But last week, the unprincipled pragmatists were proven to be completely wrong. And worse than wrong, they were shown to be counterproductive, as the only thing more useless than selling one's soul for temporal power is giving it away in exchange for nothing at all. Nor can pragmatists convincingly claim that the Republican defeat was the result of unpredictable incidents such as the Foley scandal or even rather more predictable events such as the failing military occupation of Iraq, since this unlooked-for turn of fortune was not only predictable, it was predicted:
Pragmatism in politics is self-defeating in the long run. It is a euphemism for the slow sacrifice of one's principles. The constant substitution of "electable" moderates for principled conservatives is what repeatedly kills the Republican Party and prevents it from ever realizing even a small part of its platform when it is in power.
- Satanic Schwarzeneggerians, September 15, 2003
Genuinely conservative Republicans are dismayed by the president's unveiling of his core liberalism and rightly fear for the future of a party which has likely seen its high-water mark already.
- The Coming Conservative Collapse, September 19, 2005
By the pragmatic logic, both Gerald Ford and George Bush were more electable than Ronald Reagan. But when Reagan finally got his chance in 1980, he won in a landslide, with a margin of 440 votes in the Electoral College. By the same pragmatic logic, Bob Dole was considered far more electable than his conservative rival for the 1996 nomination, Patrick Buchanan. Despite that electability, he lost by 220 Electoral College votes to an incumbent who was never popular enough to win a majority of the popular vote.
Unfortunately for conservatives, the Republican Party is still held closely in the grasp of the unprincipled. Calls for accommodation have already rung out from the highest circles, under the mistaken assumption that most Americans would rather see more government action, even if it is misguided, than gridlock. And even if one accepts that notion at face-value, one has to wonder at the bizarre strategery of those political experts who believe that making a Democratic Congress look good in comparison with its predecessor will somehow aid future Republican fortunes.
Conservatives should resign themselves to recognizing that 2008 is already a lost cause for them. Even if the Pelosi-led Democratic Congress badly overreaches, on immigration, for example, chances are good that they will be insulated from blame by a complicit President Bush. That, combined with the fact that three moderate-to-liberal Republicans, Romney, McCain and Giuliani, are the current front-runners for the presidential nomination, all but ensures the Lizard Queen's ascension to the Cherry Blossom Throne.
(Speak no ill of her, lest she unleash the full fury of the Patriot Acts upon thee!)
But there is a silver lining in the dark clouds on the horizon. Defeat has caused even some of the most blind, deaf and dumb Three-Monkey Republicans to begin to reconsider the conventional wisdom that they hitherto accepted so blithely. The lesson is not yet learned, not fully, but the crushing sting of a Clinton victory in 2008 should prove sufficiently salutary to convince the party's rank-and-file that a return to Reagan Republicanism is in order.