Washington Monthly has a fascinating — and amazingly blunt — collection of seven key conservatives explaining why they believe it’s vital for the GOP to lose in November. The title:
Time For Us To Go
Conservatives on why the GOP should lose in 2006.
The issue contains explanations by seven key conservatives on why they feel a defeat is vital to their party and to conservatism. The authors: Christopher Buckley, Bruce Bartlett, Joe Scarborough, William A. Niskanen, Bruce Fein, Jeffrey Hart, and Richard A. Viguerie.
Here’s the intro:
With Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, conservatives these days ought to be happy, but most aren’t. They see expanding government, runaway spending, Middle East entanglements, and government corruption, and they wonder why, exactly, the country should be grateful for Republican dominance. Some accuse Bush and the Republicans today of not being true conservatives. Others see a grab bag of stated policies and wonder how they cohere. Everyone thinks something’s got to change.
Now seven prominent conservatives dare to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006. Well, let’s be diplomatic and say they’d prefer divided government—soon. (Perhaps that formulation will fool Dennis Hastert.) Of course, all of them wish for the long-term health of conservatism, and most are loyal to the GOP. What they also believe, however, is that even if a Speaker Pelosi looms in the wings, sometimes the best remedy for a party gone astray is to give it a session in the time-out chair.
If you boil it down, these articles echo what we’ve repeatedly suggested on this site: that classic conservatives who followed and honor the memories of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan (and in some instances the first George Bush) don’t like what they see and want their party back.
It undermines the claim that those who raise serious questions about the direction of the present Republican party and partisans who will follow the White House and its leaders and jettison longstanding values and principles are Rinos, closet Democrats or non-Republicans. Their ranks can — and do — include some key conservative figures in America.
REQUIRED READING.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.