The Hapless GOP: Deeper Into the Abyss (short version)

The ear-splitting silence, in the aftermath of the recent election debacle, is deafening.  Where are the voices of the once self-confident, surging GOP, the party of Lincoln and Reagan, of freedom, prosperity, and American exceptionalism? What are its thoughts in the wake of the repudiation of the party and its exile into the political wilderness?  

Is there any recognition among the GOP leadership, say, of what might have gone wrong under the two terms of George Bush (and the six years of the Republican Congress) that led to so precipitous a decline in Republican fortunes?  

Indeed, the utter lack of a voice by the GOP, of any discussion of a return to Republican principles or an understanding of its many missteps, has become the demoralizing norm for this party that seems not to know what it stands for or believes in.

Is there, for example, no platform to put forth that would outline for the American people the direction the Republican party would want to take the country (if ever returned to power), coupled with an acknowledgment of the failures of the Bush administration?  

Would GOP leaders care to speak of their abandonment of conservative principles over the past eight years, of their lack of vision and will, of scandal and ear marks, fiscal recklessness, of pandering politicians who put parochial concerns over the good of the country, and worried more about the opinion of media elites over their own base?

It seems almost as if the GOP, traumatized by the past eight years, now prefers minority status, relieved of the burden of governance, spared the turmoil of reining in the sacred cows of government (the endless programs and entitlements that will weaken the nation and drive it into financial insolvency), opting instead to be a gadfly, meekly pestering the Liberal Democrat behemoth from the sidelines, as it lurches unavoidably leftward and brings the nation further into ruin and debt.   

Say what you will about the Democrats, but when they were the in the minority they strutted and swaggered as if they still owned the place, as if they knew that ultimately they would oust the upstarts, that the Republicans would capitulate and finally collapse under the strain, that they lacked the fortitude to hold power, that their brief moment in the sun was only that, a pleasant reprieve, before power would return once more to those who nurtured a lust for it, who understood it, how to grasp and hold it securely come what may, to undermine opponents, to vilify and silence detractors, and to cling finally to power as a most sacred heirloom and birthright... and govern, however calamitously.

Too, they were emboldened by a diminished and unpopular President, encouraged by a media that gave up all pretense to objectivity and openly endorsed them and their candidates, motivated by the fever pitch of their own populist rhetoric, the language of class warfare and envy, the politics of "identity," (the politics of "division," really, of balkanizing the nation into competing tribal groups, a kind of coalition of the "oppressed," based on race, class, and gender) against which the weak-kneed Republicans seemed, well, defenseless. 

Although, they needn't have been.  Quite the contrary. 

And from the "moderate" wing of the GOP, the "Rockefeller Republicans," (Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Christopher Shays, and others), there are calls for more "moderation."  They demand the GOP reach out to minorities and women, extricate themselves from the Christian Right (whom they find disagreeable), disavow Rush Limbaugh, embrace "climate change," spend more on popular social programs: to become, in other words, another liberal party, just like the Democrats, only a little less, basically the "Democrat-lite" party.

This, even after the resounding defeat of Mr. Moderate himself, the "maverick" John McCain, the man who campaigned on his record of "reaching across the aisle," on the myriad "bipartisan" bills he sponsored bearing his name (McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman), the candidate who was supposed to attract moderates and independents (not to mention Hillary voters and Hispanics), but did nothing of the sort.  

This, despite the last eight years under Republican liberal George Bush, who spent more than any Democrat President ever did, expanded government, added new federal programs, pushed as hard as any liberal for amnesty and guest worker bills, and now has become the Democrat front man for one ridiculous "stimulus" and "bailout" package after another.   

Any such further leftward shifts would mean the end of an already damaged Republican brand and further electoral demise.  It has, after all, been tried.  Eight years of Bush and then the  "bipartisan" McCain.  And the Republicans have been rejected.  

Is there a Republican champion who will offer an alternative to liberalism?  Who will stand up for the ideals of Lincoln and Reagan, of the Constitution, of limited government, capitalism, and traditional values?  In a word, of conservatism?