In the Battle for the Republican Party, Conservatives Should Hold Their Ground
Good article. The Democrats were teflon going into the election, far too small of a portion of the voters connected the party to its long legacy of economic, social, and foreign policy failures. That’s because the GOP did not do its job, both in the ’06 and ’08 election. The answer is to get some fresh blood into the party. A related issue is that Barack Obama is *not* Bill Clinton yet was allowed to run on his Democratic coattails and the memory of a good economy and relative peace. Clinton was/is a centrist Democrat, although you could make the argument that was because of Newt in Congress. Centrist Democrats understand that if you trash the economy, all of their social programs go bust too. Barack Obama, as a progressive, feels that it is the government’s duty to replace the private sector, and that will obviously be a disaster. GOP did *not* draw that distinction and should have. Centrist Democrats have both a heart and a brain, to use the old Winston Churchill categorization. Chicago machine politicians co-opting the anti-war movement have neither.
