Updated Monday, November 10, 2008 10:20 am TWN, By Dov S. Zakheim, Special to The Washington Post How the Republican party lost its bearingsPalin’s error, John McCain’s error and the GOP’s error was to assume that a shrinking slice of the U.S. population could constitute an increasingly large and influential faction of the party. There are simply too few culturally conservative whites to sustain a national political party. At most, that community can contribute to a larger coalition; it cannot constitute that coalition on its own. How did we lose our bearings so badly? In late 1998, when I joined then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s foreign policy team (famously dubbed the “Vulcans”), I was going to work for a man who stood for five key principles that many of us thought would underpin a national Republican majority for decades to come. Last week’s failure stemmed from my party’s failure to hew to these values. The first and best-known of these was “compassionate conservatism,” exemplified by the insistence that no child be left behind in poverty and despair — a reflection of President Bush’s determination to improve the lot of underprivileged Americans, especially minorities. The second was modesty in international relations; we would no longer preen as the world’s “indispensable nation,” as the Clinton administration had boastfully put it. The third was small government, meaning both lower taxes and less bureaucracy. The fourth was a thorough transformation of our national defense structure, which entailed eliminating waste, cutting red tape and improving our acquisition system to produce a 21st-century military and intelligence community. Finally, we wanted a new spirit of comity in Washington, reflecting the bipartisanship that had been the hallmark of Bush’s governorship of Texas. President Bush is a man who stubbornly adheres to the values that he believes in, but the administration and the party that he led — my party — abandoned every one of the five principles that catapulted him to the White House. Comments November 12, 2008 williamccchan@ Reply What a load of self-serving malarkey. What destroyed the Bush administration was the neocon-Jewish contingent that sold America down the tubes to benefit Israel. I hope and pray Obama stands up to the WELFARE State of Israel, and cuts it loose. November 12, 2008 dougavin@ Dov,By the time I got to the end of your article you had me feeling pretty sorry for you conservative, right wing, Israel supporting folks. Until you said "The United States remains a center-right nation." I assume that you witnessed the presidential election the US just had. Where the electoral votes went so quickly to Obama the election was really over by 8 PM. US citizens voted against a center-right nation. They want real change. Good luck in getting your conservative, right wing party back together. You're going to need it. Doug November 12, 2008 delfringado@ Actually, Mr. Zakheim, Mr. Bush was never elected by anyone other than the Supreme Court and Diebold. And by the way, where did the $2.3 trillion disappear to while you were the Pentagon comptroller? Good thing 9/11 shut down THAT investigation, eh? | Also in Washington Post Most Read |
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