The Republican Implosion
Three news stories in recent days show just how much the elections of 2008 will be the Democrats to lose, (which, given their recent efforts, remains a distinct possibility).
The first concerns fundraising, and the massive edge the Democrats have been maintaining in this area:
The Democratic presidential candidates continued to raise significantly more money during the last three months than their Republican counterparts, according to official and unofficial third-quarter fund-raising tallies that were released yesterday.
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Strategists in both parties said that the fund-raising imbalance showed that Democrats, and their donors, are more energized this year as they battle to reclaim the White House after nearly eight years of Republican rule. And they said President Bush’s sagging popularity is hurting the Republicans who are vying to replace him.
“This just shows the difficult political climate that Republicans are facing,” said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist. “The bright side is that next spring, the Republicans will have plenty of money to give the candidate who goes up against Hillary Clinton.”
Clinton is, of course, the dream candidate for the Republicans. No other Democratic contender will be able to energize the Republican base against them so well. Another point on the, "Do the Democrats want to lose?" scale.
Anyway, the other two stories are even more significant, and show just how bad the situation the Republicans find themselves in really is. Two of what have been their major base constituencies are looking elsewhere for 2008.
Some of the nation's most politically influential conservative Christians, alarmed by the prospect of a Republican presidential nominee who supports abortion rights, are considering backing a third-party candidate.
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"There is such jaundiced feelings about any promises or commitments from any Republican leaders," he said in a phone interview. "You could almost cut the anger and the frustration with a knife in that room it's so strong. Because they don't know what else to do, they're talking third party."
. . .
However, the proposal to consider a third-party candidate comes from anger that the Republicans whom Christians have helped elect for decades have failed to act on policy issues important to evangelicals on abortion, marriage and school prayer.
"Conservatives have been treated like a mistress as long as any of us can remember," Viguerie said. "They'll have lots of private meetings with us, tell us how much they appreciate it and how much they value us, but if you see me on the street please don't speak with me."
And finally, the business community and fiscal conservatives are also walking away from the Republican Party, which has been focusing too much on social issues and tax cuts for their liking.
The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title.
New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its "brand." The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond.
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Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances. Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he told one Democratic Party leader: "The Republican Party left me" -- a twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its '60s and '70s-era liberalism.
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But polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago.
Richard Clinch, a 69-year-old New York native, illustrates the party's plight. The retired Westinghouse manager and mechanical engineer says he has been "a lifelong Republican." As a young fiscal conservative, he was attracted by the party's reputation for frugal and competent governance, he says. The Democratic Party left him cold, he says, because of its social spending and ties to the unions that exasperated him at work. As a retiree in Annapolis, Md., he became a local Republican officer.
Yet next year, for the first time since he began voting in 1960, Mr. Clinch won't support the Republican presidential nominee, he says. He only "very reluctantly" voted for Mr. Bush's re-election in 2004. "Like many Republicans, I am frustrated," he says. "We've lost control of spending," and the administration's execution of the Iraq war has been "incompetent." Mr. Clinch says he is liberal about rights for women and gays, and vexed that "we [Republicans] get sidetracked on these issues like gay marriage."
All this is quite familiar to me, as I identified myself as a conservative for most of my adult life, and to some extent still do. The problem is that what I grew up understanding as conservatism bears almost no resemblance to what the "Conservative Movement" has become.
Being an atheist and to some extent a libertarian, I cannot support the imposition of fundamentalist religious ideology on people, and it was the growing influence of the Christian right on the conservative movement that caused me to stop supporting conservative candidates.
What has really struck me over the last while though, is the complete lack of fiscal restraint from the right these days. "Tax and Spend" liberals may be bad, but spending without taxing is worse, because those record deficits will have to be paid someday, and that means even greater taxation in the future. Everything the Republicans have been doing is focused on short-term electoral gains rather than any real long-term vision, and its finally catching up to them, a good thing in my opinion.
The moderates have been streaming for the exits for some time now, and now what's left of the conservative base is squabbling over what appears to soon be a carcass of a party. Its hard to imagine a way the Democrats could screw this advantage up ahead of the 2008 elections.
Of course, reality can sometimes make the most imaginative scenarios look tame in comparison, and given the Democratic record so far these last several years, and particularly since they theoretically took control of Congress, means that even with the Republicans imploding, the Democrats victory is far from assured. Hopefully, someone amongst them will find a way to give the party some backbone.
