Republican Fatigue

The Republican party must be the theme for today, because I just finished reading a great commentary in Time magazine from Republican pollster Frank Luntz. He discusses the reasons behind the GOP's sagging poll numbers and the good possibility that the Democrats will win control of the US House of Representatives in November.

What went wrong? Why do Democrats finally appear to be heading toward electoral success and Republicans back into the political wilderness? In a word, fatigue. Americans are tired of the war, tired of watching illegal aliens race across our unguarded borders, tired of high energy costs, tired of wasteful Washington spending, and tired of story after story of political corruption and misbehavior.

The Republican Party of 2006 is a tired, cranky shell of the aggressive, reformist movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change. I knew those Republicans. I worked for them. They were friends of mine. These Republicans are not those Republicans.

Luntz perfectly describes the Fall of the GOP. This is not the same party that came to power in 1994. Gone are the the deficit hawks and the proponents of a smaller, limited government that respected the rights of the individual. The party needs to lose, if only so it can be reborn and redeemed in some future election. The GOP will need to engage in some serious self-examination and exorcise the accumulated demons of the Bush Administration.