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Voices In The Wilderness

Ross: Out-of-power parties often benefit dramatically from bad times in America: The GOP did in the late 1970s, and the Democrats have over the last four years. But the pattern of American history suggests that bad times are the exception rather than rule – and unless James Howard Kunstler’s prophecies come true, a party that […]

Ross:

Out-of-power parties often benefit dramatically from bad times in America: The GOP did in the late 1970s, and the Democrats have over the last four years. But the pattern of American history suggests that bad times are the exception rather than rule – and unless James Howard Kunstler’s prophecies come true, a party that goes deep into the wilderness and waits for a crisis to bring it back to power stands a good chance of waiting for a long time.  (And yes, that’s a case for disaffected conservatives of all stripes – those who still have a stake in the GOP, that is; not the Larisonians of the world – swallowing hard and voting for McCain.)

After the last few electoral cycles, and in the face of depleted American power and a remarkable financial shock that remind us how transitory worldly glory is, I turn more and more to the basic lesson of Geoffrey Parker’s Success Is Never Final.  Parker is an historian of seventeenth-century Europe, and he has written on the history of the Thirty Years’ War and the Spanish Monarchy’s futile decades-long efforts to crush the Dutch.  The cover of Success Is Never Final is a copy of Velazquez’s striking portrayal of the Dutch surrender at Breda in 1625, which represented something of the zenith of Spanish power in the Low Countries after decades of desultory warring against the United Provinces.  The point of using Breda as the symbol of Spanish success is that Breda fell to the Dutch again twelve years later: Breda is emblematic of a more general failure of Spanish arms in the middle of the century and the gradual decline of the Spanish Monarchy as a continental power.  The lesson of the book, as the title suggests, is that victories are ephemeral and the seeds of later defeat are being sown in the midst of what everyone regards as progress and success.   

In one sense, this is common sense and perfectly obvious, but this basic lesson seems to get away from people, especially in election years.  As November approaches, memories seem to get very short.  Where just a few years before there was loose talk of thirty-year dominance of the Presidency on the model of the early 20th century GOP, there is now the fear of a long sojourn out of power.  To avoid this, disaffected conservatives are supposed to “come home,” but in November just as in 2006 it will not matter whether McCain succeeds in retaining the GOP core.  Every tactic McCain has employed has been part of a strategy to retain and mobilize that core, and it will not succeed, because this reflects a complete lack of comprehension about why the GOP is in its current predicament.  Republicans and conservatives generally rallied to the flag with almost the same reflexive loyalty in 2006 as they had done in previous elections, and the GOP was still routed because previously GOP-leaning independents fled the party in droves and the left was better mobilized and organized.  The Palin selection and the enthusiastic reaction to it have been disheartening because they suggest that conservatives will continue to bind themselves closely to the GOP and its obsession with short-term objectives. 

There may be a few more defections from the GOP on the right this year, but not that many.  What seems certain is that, except for a shrinking, irreducible core of right-leaning independents, everyone who is not a registered Republican will be backing any candidate that is not McCain.  What conservatives who want to remain politically engaged with the party that has failed them time after time (the non-Larisonians, if you like) need to do is make whatever efforts they can to limit losses in Congressional elections this year.  Strategists need to assume a McCain defeat, which seems increasingly likely, and get into a position that will make the 2010 midterms somewhat competitive.  Objective economic conditions seem likely to worsen in the coming year, and there is every reason to think that unified Democratic government will overreach as unified governments tend to do.  If McCain were somehow to prevail on 4 November, the calamity that would befall the Congressional GOP in 2010 would great and would help to erase all political gains of the previous sixteen years.  Those conservatives who do not want to be consigned to the wilderness for the next decade or two need to think about the long-term consequences of a McCain victory, which would be disastrous for conservatives both in policy and political terms in the next several electoral cycles.  If his insane mortgage-bailout-in-every-pot plan doesn’t persuade people of that, perhaps the prospect of being the minority party for the next twenty years will.

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