Hey, I didn't coin the phrase. The Republicans have been known in Washington as the Stupid Party for as long as I can remember (and we're talking decades, not centuries). The phrase is sometimes attributed to former Republican Senator Alan Simpson, who reportedly said: "We have two political parties in this country, the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. I belong to the Stupid Party."
But the Republican Party of Simpson's day, during the Reagan era, looks pretty smart compared to this one. The wheels have completely come off this GOP jalopy and have rolled into a ditch. What's worse for the GOP's future is my suspicion that they don't know why. Conservative Columnist Rod Dreher writes that the Republicans "will be wandering around for some time like a google-eyed Wile E. Coyote after he's had an anvil dropped on his head. The recriminations on the right will make the Night of the Long Knives look like a knitting-needle ticklefest."
Yes, you could say McCain would be President and we wouldn't even be having this discussion today if weren't for the Wall Street meltdown, but McCain also ran a horrible campaign. Many felt he shouldn't have even been the party standard bearer. But it may have been a fitting end to an era in which George W. Bush had diluted and weakened the conservative brand with his huge budgets and expansion of government.
Nevertheless, if you're a forlorn Republican today, know that your party will probably be back sooner than you think. But the good news for you could be bad news for the nation, at least short term. Let me explain.
I sense that Obama supporters imagine that Wall Street will somehow magically right itself when "The One" sits down in the Oval office. Well, it's not going to. At Wall and Broad, there's still blood in streets. An analyst on CNBC today said, "Nothing is changed. The US economy is deteriorating day by day. We're getting contraction, we're getting deleveraging, and that's going to continue." Obama's being handed the captain's wheel of a listing ship.
Obama can blame Bush for about 6 months to a year, and then he begins to wear the national problems in the eyes of swing voters. The Republicans might be able to take advantage of it as early as the 2010 congressional races, if they drop the Marquis of Queensbury rulebook and fight the way the "Evil Party" has fought throughout the Bush era, and the way the GOP used to fight when it was a feisty minority party waging a guerrilla war against Tip O'Neill and Jim Wright.
But for that, the "Stupid Party" will need to grow a brain, and craft an appealing conservative vision that is true to its principles, and that will win back the American middle.
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