1 Boring Old Man

Sorry, Senator. Let’s Salvage What We Can
By David Frum

There are many ways to lose a presidential election. John McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him…

So in August, McCain tried a bold new gambit: He would reach out to independents and women with an exciting and unexpected vice presidential choice. That didn’t work out so well either. Gov. Sarah Palin connected with neither independents nor women. She did, however, ignite the Republican base, which has come to support her passionately… To fire up the Republican base, the McCain team has hit at Barack Obama as an alien, a radical and a socialist.

Sure enough, the base has responded. After months and months of wan enthusiasm among Republicans, these last weeks have at last energized the core of the party. But there’s a downside: The very same campaign strategy that has belatedly mobilized the Republican core has alienated and offended the great national middle, which was the only place where the 2008 election could have been won…

A beaten party needs a base from which to recover…

First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation’s financial system. It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends – to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government’s position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power – and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.

Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC’s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington. Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named "fairness doctrine"; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.

The best bulwark for a nonpolitical finance system and a national culture of open debate will be the strongest possible Republican caucus in the Senate. And it is precisely that strength that is being cannibalized now by the flailing end of the McCain-Palin campaign.

What should Republicans be doing differently? Two things:

1. Every available dollar that can be shifted to a senatorial campaign must be shifted to a senatorial campaign...
2. We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are probably going to win the White House – and that warns of the dangers of one-party, left-wing government. There’s a lot of poll evidence that voters prefer divided government. By some estimates, perhaps as many as 8 percent of voters consciously cast strategic votes in favor of division. These are the voters we need to be talking to now…

"The government now owns a big stake in the nation’s banking system. Trillions of dollars are now under direct government control. It’s not wise to put that money under one-party control. It’s just too tempting. You need a second set of eyes on that cash. You need oversight and accountability. Otherwise, you’re going to wake up two years from now and find out that a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House have been funneling a ton of that money to their friends and allies. It’ll be a big scandal – but it will be too late. The money will be gone. Divided government is the best precaution you can have." It’s the only argument we have left. And, as the old Washington saying goes, it has the additional merit of being true.

David Frum is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. A contributing writer for a number of rightist outlets (including the National Review Online, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, Canada’s National Post, and Britain’s Daily Telegraph), Frum’s articles typically offer ad hominem critiques of liberals and Europeans, espouse conservative social views, and push hawkish foreign policies—or a combination of all of the above…

Maybe you saw him acting like a pompous ass on Rachel Madow recently. But I find his Washington Post op-ed truly remarkable. It’s like getting an up close and personal look at the Republican Spin Machine from the inside. After listing all the failed attempts of the McCain Campaign to make up some story line that they could spin to the general poulace, he’s grasping for straws and comes up with a line to use to try and sell Republican Senatorial Candidates. He starts with:

We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are probably going to win the White House – and that warns of the dangers of one-party, left-wing government. There’s a lot of poll evidence that voters prefer divided government. By some estimates, perhaps as many as 8 percent of voters consciously cast strategic votes in favor of division. These are the voters we need to be talking to now..

…the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation’s financial system. It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends – to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government’s position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power – and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.

There’s a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC’s evening line-up — and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington. Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game.Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named "fairness doctrine"; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.