Last One in the GOP Can Turn Out the Lights

No matter what happens on November 4, there is going to be some serious soul-searching in the Republican Party. The party that just four years ago was supremely disciplined and knew exactly what it stood for has shattered.

It would have been tough for any Republican to win in this environment, but what has been most alarming are the once-loyal GOP legions who are abandoning ship in droves.
This week alone you’ve had Bill Weld, Colin Powell, Chris Buckley, Charlie Fried, Ken Adelman, Nicholas Cafardi and many other standard-bearers, along with 22% of people who identify themselves as conservative, announcing they were behind Obama. It’s that 22% number that’s most impressive – the big names might be angling for new jobs, but there’s a groundswell of grassroots support that is astonishing.

So who will be turning out the lights in GOP headquarters? It seems the only ones who are sticking by McCain and Caribou Barbie are the bloviators on talk radio and Fox News. And when you see and hear some of the comments that have been made at some of their rallies, you know that many – surely not all – of these supporters have bought the smear attacks without hesitation. Many of these continue to blame their party’s woes on the usual suspects – the liberal media, academics, abortion supporters – and will continue to do so after the election. To them, the GOP can do no wrong.

But when you look at the names and figures in my second paragraph – not to mention the conservative stalwarts like George Will, Christopher Hitchens, David Brooks and Andrew Sullivan, who lost confidence in the Republicans long ago – you realize that the people who once led the party’s ideology have deserted. In its desire to appeal to what appeared to be the new base of evangelicals, Joe Six-Packs and Joe the Plumber, the GOP turned into not only a party that ran on wedge issues, but also one that disdained intellectuals and any shades of gray. Long-held tenets like fiscal responsibility were dropped in favor of love-it-or-leave-it patriotism and partisanship. Anyone who questioned or dissented was labeled a traitor and un-American.

By acting like a bunch of adolescents who think they know everything, anyone who disagreed with the my-way-or-the-highway GOP chose the highway. The immediate GOP reaction on November 5 will probably be a mixture of sour grapes and petulance, but to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, those who felt the Republican Party left them know the truth. When you run on an anti-intellectual platform that boasts of dividing America between real Americans in small towns and lesser Americans in cities and suburbs, expect those in cities and suburbs to leave you. When you urge a new round of McCarthyism to investigate the majority of Americans who may vote for Democrats, you will lose the vote of anybody that has the slightest memory of those dark days, unless they’re someone who is drinking the same Kool-Aid you are. Is it any wonder that Republicans have lost not just the brains of their own party, but also so many college graduates, recent immigrants, doctors and white collar workers that used to be solid GOP voters? For years liberals screamed about class warfare and ridiculed anyone who disagreed with them; it got them nowhere. Now the Republicans are doing the same thing, with similar results.

I was legitimately excited this time last year when Rudy Giuliani and McCain were in the primaries. I thought we would see at least the two of them take a populist, intelligent approach to campaigning. It’s disheartening to not only see McCain unwisely drop his once well-regarded viewpoints for this vapid dogma, but also to hear Giuliani’s robocalls telling people not to vote for Obama because of his lack of support for mandatory prison sentences. If the GOP thinks people are going to base their votes on that issue in this day and age, it could act as the party’s coda. Both of these smart and capable men should be ashamed of themselves for adopting and endorsing these beliefs.

So what’s left is a party that basically shoved much of its former base out the door, abandoned the core principles of Reagan and Goldwater, has no central campaign theme that addresses the current economic situation, and – on top of everything – done a miserable job the last four years. What you reap is what you sow.