Moderate Madness and the Decline of the GOP

Good op-ed from last November by  Patrick Ross at New University. Most of the points he makes are just as valid today as they were ten months ago:

It says a lot that the media and the hacks inside the McCain camp have circled the wagons against Palin. The insiders, being their usual traitorous selves, are trying to slough off the blame for their miserable performance so that they can continue working campaigns and attending state dinners. It’s also telling that the worst they can come up with are petty personal smears...

[...]

The moderate and liberal Republicans got everything they wanted this election: an equivocating campaign about global warming and Joe the Plumber, no personal attacks – including the total exclusion of Jeremiah Wright from official discourse – and a nominee whose claim to fame is voting with the Democrats. Look where this behavior has gotten Republicans over the last 12 years: Bob Dole went down to insurgent, anti-moderate conservatives voting for Ross Perot, Bush narrowly won against candidates as weak as Al Gore and John Kerry and it all culminated with a candidate so “mavericky” that he defeated himself.

Even before Palin’s nomination, polls indicated that moderates were breaking for Obama in excess of 60 percent. Ronald Reagan won landslides with conservatism, not by courting back-stabbing independents like Colin Powel (sic)

McCain’s loss will be harmful in the short term, but it has thoroughly discredited the moderate heads of the party and is going to force a groundswell of reform for the GOP. People on the inside are obviously scared, as is evident by the panicked rush to blame Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and anybody else who didn’t genuflect to the messiah. Conservatives have been Balkanized. It’s time to flush the moderates before they crush the GOP.

We disagree with the author on one point. He equates moderates and independents by labeling Colin Powell an independent, which the former secretary of state is not. Many independents are unaffiliated conservatives, libertarians or right-leaning centrists. Powell is a liberal Republican who claims to be a moderate. Moderates are simply liberals who like to pretend that they are something else.

But we are in agreement with Ross that moderates have nearly destroyed the Republican Party. Even worse, together the big-spending wing of the neoconservative faction, they have split Ronald Reagan's winning coalition into feuding tribes. We believe Sarah Palin may just be the leader who can unite them, as Chief Pontiac united the Chippewa, Potawatomi, and Ottawa nearly 250 years ago.  

- JP