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None of the Above? The Case For Sitting Out 2008

Patrick Ruffini is polling Fred Thompson supporters, asking who we’ll support if Fred drops out. It’s an awful prospect. Each of the other four is deeply flawed (although none quite so badly as Ron Paul). Blogger William Sjostrom recently took me to task for having a “take my ball and go home approach”:

I am tired of the approach that says some candidates just upset me and so I would rather stay home and be virtuous than face up to real choices.

Fair enough. Mason Colley quipped that “Victory brings obliviousness; defeat, attentiveness.” The GOP is broken. Badly. As I’ve argued repeatedly, George Bush not only has wasted the conservative moment, he has done the conservative movement grave harm:

Bush was blessed with the opportunity to effect many long-term conservative goals. For most of his presidency, the GOP controlled the White House and Congress, as well as having a solid critical mass in the courts. Despite these advantages, however, what has Bush really accomplished?

Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

To be blunt, no.

But it’s not just Bush. The deeply corrupt K Street gang discredited the GOP Congressional leadership, who proved to be concerned solely with clinging to power for power’s own sake.

God made the people of Israel wander in the desert 40 years so as to remake the Israelis Israelites into a people fit for the tasks ahead. The GOP seriously needs a time out so that it can rethink its role in American democracy. There are a lot of legitimate questions facing the GOP. Do you adhere to the limited government principles of Reagan and Thatcher or do you follow the lead of UK Tory leader David Cameron? As the Economist recently opined, “it seems likely that the Republican Party, as a number of its members are already urging, will have to embrace environmentalism and cuddly economics as the Tories were forced to.”

Fred Thompson was a more than acceptable Reaganesque conservative who offered the GOP a chance to delay having to face those tough choices. Indeed, to borrow a football metaphor, a Thompson presidency offered the GOP a chance to reload rather than going through the painful process of rebuilding. The other 4 are all so deeply and irredeemably flawed that their presidency likely would be doomed to failure from the outset.

If the choice is between choosing the lesser of 4 evils and teeing up a process by which the GOP reinvents itself for the 21st Century, I’m inclined to opt for the latter. Coupled with losing Congress in 2006, losing the presidency in 2008 will provide a pair of defeats that surely will prompt “attentiveness” on the part of the GOP leadership and the intellectual base of think tanks and academics who helped lay the foundation for the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. Just as the Israelis Israelites had to be punished for listening to the 10 fearful spies, the GOP needs to be punished for having been seduced by Bush and DeLay. Just as the Israelis Israelites came back stronger and fitter for the tasks ahead, so might a chastened GOP.

So that’s why my answer to Ruffini’s poll is: None of the above.

Update: Andrew Sullivan says I’m pulling ”a Cartman.” I can only assume Andrew is referring to the fact that Cartman, as Wikipedia explains, is “incredibly charismatic, and is a natural born leader, usually being the default leader of the boys in times of crisis or adventure. His charisma also allows hims to manipulate crowds and mobs with ease, quickly gaining their trust and loyalty, usually to forward his own interests.” (Heh.)

Update: James Joyner replies, arguing that:

With incredibly rare exception, a losing party invariably learns the wrong lesson: We weren’t true to ourselves! If only we’d been more liberal/conservative, we’d have won!

Steven Taylor makes a similar point:

I have never been fully convinced of the thesis that losing necessarily forces a party to truly engage in serious re-evaluation and reformation. For one thing, our parties are not centralized and change has more to do with specific presidential candidates than anything else. I recall a similar line of thinking being quite popular in Republican circles in 1992, and yet how much did the party really change after the Clinton win? It is also makes me wonder how much US parties really can change, given that they have to appeal to large numbers of citizens and therefore are more about vague promises and impressions than specific ideological goals (but that is, perhaps, a separate issue).

They’ve got a point. Certainly, as Joyner points out, the Congressional GOP doesn’t seem to have learned much from 2006.

Update: Okay, I take it all back. I’m going to hold my nose and vote McCain. Why? Judges. The line to call me a flip flopper forms to the right.