The Elephant in the Parlor

Benjamin Wallace-Wells has a most interesting assessment of the current Republican power-structure in the October issue of The Washington Monthly. The title of his article -- "Party Down" -- gives an inadequate foretaste of what it contains. The subtitle does better: "Like the Democrats during the 1970s, today's GOP is hidebound and out of touch." The gist: just as the Democrats of the Carter years lost touch with America and went through the wilderness of the 1980s lost and rudderless, the Republican Party of 2004 -- in control of EVERYTHING -- is driving by sheer habit, hopped up on the powerful narcotic called POWER, straight over a cliff of their own making. We recommend the whole article (and thanks to Andy for providing the link), but here's just a salient paragraph:

"Two decades ago, Democrats granted moral authority to identity-group liberals, who, in their admirable zeal to fight discrimination, soft-peddled evidence that the country was growing more tolerant, and refused to consider that factors other than racism might explain, say, lagging minority test scores. As a result, Democrats defended unpopular quota-style affirmative-action programs and bilingual education. Today, Republicans bow to the supposed moral superiority of Christian conservatives, who, though living in the most religiously-minded and tolerant country on earth, persist in feeling persecuted. The GOP lets these groups lead them by the nose -- even when, as on stem cell research, it puts them in the position of defending the unpopular and morally dubious argument that millions of Parkinson's patients should be denied a major hope for a cure in order to prevent the destruction of a few zygotes with zero chance of ever becoming humans. Two decades ago, Carter's overly cautious foreign policy helped convince millions of security-minded Democrats to abandon the party. Now, Bush's incautious foreign policy may be driving millions of Republicans the other way."