A Bozo, a Baddie, a Bug & a Bigot

Jeffrey Goldberg writes of the end times, but not of the Christian right variety; instead, this doomsday scenario is about The Republican Implosion. In a Letter from Washington section of the New Yorker, Party Unfaithful, Goldberg says of Karl Rove and the GOP:

When Rove came to Washington, after the 2000 election, he envisioned creating an enduring Republican majority—the permanent mobilization of the Party’s broad, socially conservative base. Part of his strategy was to cast as threats, in alarming terms, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and other bogeymen of the right. It is Rove’s cleverness, combined with his joie de combat, that made him insufferable to Democrats.

Now, though, the Democrats are gloating—and happy to point out that little more than thirty per cent of the public approves of Bush’s job performance. Andrew Sullivan, a disaffected conservative, has joked on his blog that Rove seems to be getting his permanent majority—except that it’s a Democratic one. The Republican reversal has certainly come with great speed—as fortunes in Washington have tended to do since the Vietnam era.

The disparagement of the Bush Administration and the Party is not limited to Democrats:

Disillusionment with the Administration has become widespread among the conservatives who once were Bush’s strongest supporters. Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, said recently, “The Republican Administration has shown itself to be completely incompetent to the point that, of Republicans in Iowa, fifty-two per cent thought we should be out of Iraq in six months.” Edwards, who left Congress in 1993 and now teaches at Princeton, is helping to lead an effort among some conservatives to curtail the President’s power in such areas as warrantless wiretapping. “This Administration is beyond the pale in terms of arrogance and incompetence,” he said. “This guy thinks he’s a monarch, and that’s scary as hell.” The grievances against the Administration seem limitless. Many congressional Republicans, for instance, were upset that Bush waited to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld until after the midterm elections.

You know how much the "mighty" have fallen when you are being called scary by your own side. Like a modern day version of the Four Horsemen, the downfall of the party has its villains:

And now Karl Rove, the man Bush has called his “boy genius,” is among those being blamed by conservatives for the Party’s problems—blame that he shares with others who have attempted to transform the party. One is Newt Gingrich, the strategist behind the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, who could not hold together his coalition, and resigned. (Gingrich also faced ethics problems—he was accused of using tax-deductible donations for political purposes.) Another is Tom DeLay, who served as House whip under Gingrich and became Majority Leader under Gingrich’s successor, Dennis Hastert, and who left facing charges relating to campaign finance. Perhaps most of all, conservatives blame Rove’s boss, George W. Bush.

The rest of this interesting read discusses what went wrong (and who done it), along with a few words about the alternatives, the Democrats -- the current "Not them" party. It's well worth a read. As for the four horsemen -- they are traditionally named War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. You can decide which of Rove, Bush, Gingrich and DeLay, fit which role.

(Picture via The Four Horsemen).

Tags: Commentary, Bush, Politics