GOP will have a choice to make
By Michael Gerson
Published: November 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — The great temptation — or perhaps the job description — of the commentator is overinterpretation. Events are fit neatly, or are forced roughly, into the narrative of our own desires.
Advertisement
Rejection of conservatism
Still others are eager to translate a loss for McCain as a national rejection of conservatism. This would, of course, require McCain — the author of campaign finance reform, the supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, the proposer of a cap-and-trade system — to actually be a conservative symbol. Yet there is little doubt, given a likely (though not certain) McCain defeat, that the conservative movement would enter a period of intense soul-searching. The issues that have provided conservatives with victories in the past — particularly welfare and crime — have been rendered irrelevant by success. The issues of the moment — income stagnation, climate disruption, massive demographic shifts, health care access — seem a strange, unexplored land for many in the movement. And McCain, though a past reformer, did little to reaffirm that reputation during his campaign. After every Republican loss — whatever the proximate cause — it is worth recalling the words of Whittaker Chambers: "If the Republican Party cannot get some grip of the actual world we live in and from it generalize and actively promote a program that means something to masses of people — why somebody else will. … The Republican Party will become like one of those dark little shops which apparently never sell anything. If, for any reason, you go in, you find, at the back, an old man, fingering for his own pleasure, some oddments of cloth. … Nobody wants to buy them, which is fine because the old man is not really interested in selling. He just likes to hold and to feel.” That remains the Republican choice: to offer a message for the masses, or to remain in business merely for its own ideological pleasure. WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUPToolbar sponsored by: David Stanley Ford
Related Topics:
Public Finance, Politics, U.S. Politics, Economic Issues, Elections and Voting, Recessions and Depressions, U.S. Presidential Election, Economic Crisis


Thank you for joining our conversations on NewsOK.com. We encourage your discussions but ask that you stay within the bounds of our terms and conditions. Please help us by reporting comments that violate these guidelines. To review our rules of engagement, go to Commenting and posting policy.
Leave a commentEditor's note: It is not our intent to offer comments on local crime or fatality stories.
Log in below or sign up (it's free).