The Republican Decline
David Brooks has an article out today in the New York Times where he tries to explain the reasons the Republican Party seems to be disintegrating. Its a lot of talk about dispositions, ideologies, creeds, and so forth, which starts out not too badly, but loses me when he starts pretending that the "creedal" conservatives have been pushing for individual power and freedom while ""temperamental" conservatives would prefer to see a bit more government control, and that's why they're abandoning the GOP.
I'm pretty sure the former libertarian-minded wing of the GOP, and anybody else who pays attention to civil liberties and rights, would be happy to tell Brooks that the current GOP hasn't exactly been overwhelming in pushing for "too much individualism".
In any case, if you want to know why the traditional conservative party in the US is in trouble, you don't have to look very hard.
When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.
1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.
"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."
Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.
Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.
"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.
. . .
Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.
Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."
Now that story, amongst many other examples of how the Republican administration hasn't been terribly kind to the soldiers it has sent to war is only a partial explanation for the decline of the Republican Party. The other part is that while this story is being reported, all those folks who constantly spout the talking point about "supporting the troops" like a barrage against any criticism of the War President are far more concerned about the fact that Barack Obama isn't wearing a US flag lapel pin.
When your base has those kinds of priorities, you should expect that rational people are going to desert you.
