"Rudy Giuliani has an unusual profile that won him a majority of votes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, of all places, but he’s suppressing that to be George Allen."
The idea that the current crop of Republican presidential candidates just want to be George Allen may sound to you like a liberal idea. Today, however, it comes to you from David Brooks.
The conservative columnist also observes that Republicans are "like people quietly marching to their doom."
You know it's bad when suddenly all your best cheerleaders are throwing rotten tomatoes at you. Well, some of us know it's bad, but the Bush-in-the-Bubble crowd probably won't know it until the morning of November 7, 2008. An excerpt from David Brooks' scathing attack on the wannabe-George-Allen Republicans follows.
Grim Old Party
by David Brooks
At the University of Chicago there’s a group of scholars who are members of what is called the Rational Expectations school of economics. They believe human beings tend to anticipate unpleasant future events and seek in advance to avoid them. Their teachings do not apply to the Republican Party.
The Republicans suffered one unpleasant event in November 2006, and they are headed toward an even nastier one in 2008. The Democrats have opened up a wide advantage in party identification and are crushing the G.O.P. among voters under 30.
Moreover, there has been a clear shift, in poll after poll, away from Republican positions on social issues and on attitudes toward government. Democratic approaches are favored on almost all domestic, tax and fiscal issues, and even on foreign affairs.
The public, in short, wants change.
And yet the Republicans refuse to offer that. On Capitol Hill, there is a strange passivity in Republican ranks. Republicans are privately disgusted with how President Bush has led their party and the nation, but they don’t publicly offer any alternatives. They just follow sullenly along. They privately believe the country needs new approaches to the war against Islamic extremism, but they don’t offer them. They try to block Democratic initiatives, but they don’t offer the country any new ways to think about the G.O.P.
They are like people quietly marching to their doom.
And at the presidential level, things are even worse. The party is blessed with a series of charismatic candidates who are not orthodox Republicans. But the pressures of the campaign are such that these candidates have had to repress anything that might make them interesting. Instead of offering something new, each of them has been going around pretending to be the second coming of George Allen — a bland, orthodox candidate who will not challenge any of the party’s customs or prejudices.
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David Brooks News Politics George Allen Bush Republicans Rudy Giuliani Grim Old Party 2008
