The Grand Old Party's dead

The Right was dealt a crushing blow to the head recently. Every Republican by now has had to face the bitter news: Obama is the President-elect. Many seem to believe that in consequence of Obama’s victory this election, the Republican Party lost. But as sometimes happens, the obvious is not the whole truth.

It is more truthful to note that the Republican Party’s demise was in the works long before this election, even before Bush, if anyone remembers that far. As it stands today, the party label is about the only aspect that has been left intact, thus, there was little left for the Republican Party to contest. The Republican Party has been sabotaged in recent years by a leadership that indulges little regard of or responsiveness to the Republican Party’s grounding principles or its general recommendations.

Let’s consider the Republican Party of the not-so-distant past. The Republican Party once embraced a ‘humble foreign policy.’ That seems laughable now and almost totally incompatible with the Party, given the last eight years and the next four that McCain was promising. But it’s true; this was once a platform of the GOP. Indeed, it was such a salient point with the majority of Republicans – indeed Americans generally – that it was enthusiastically embraced by Bush during his first campaign. Of course, the Republican Party also once eschewed nation building, but I suppose that was before creating empires became such an irresistible and entangling game..

In a bygone era, Republicans could also be trusted as the party that advocated a limited, constitutional government. That last part might have been expected to go out the window when the departing Republican president drove the nation into an unconstitutional war, but forget that troublesome bit – what of limiting government generally? No medals earned in this respect, I’m afraid. The Bush presidency has witnessed a gross expansion of governmental powers across the board, sometimes to make sure no children were left behind, other times to streamline the War on Terror by suspending habeas corpus or other pesky annoyances.

But maybe the Republican Party has not been a complete failure of late? Perhaps social conservatives have made ground? After all, Bush has long enjoyed the approval and support of many in the Christian Right. But has he earned such praise? Consider abortion: Bush has hardly forced it to extinction. He hasn’t even gotten as far as most Libertarians advocate, which is to take abortion out of the federal government’s hands and entrust it to the discretion of the states.

The conservative party has done a poor job at conserving itself in any recognizable form lately. That’s not to say that the Republican Party doesn’t have some worthy platforms to preserve, but it first has to acknowledge the existence of such foundations before it can begin the long process of restoration.

Meanwhile, as recent Republican leadership has lead the party further and further from its roots, what has been the outcome? This election witnessed many Americans blindly voting for ‘change.’ During the election race, Republican commentators rightly critiqued Obama for utilizing such an undefined term. But of course, the regrettable fact is that this vague promise worked. Americans actually lined up in millions to vote for anything that had a chance of repulsing the Bush legacy. The take home lesson for Republicans is that in this election ‘change’ simply equated to ‘not Bush’ or ‘not McCain,’ if voters could even distinguish between the two.

In no small part, the Republican leadership and its enabling constituents are to blame for Obama’s victory. Given that many considered the only alternative to voting for Obama was voting for the unrecognizable, belligerent party that the GOP has become, Obama’s victory comes as no surprise. But perhaps there is hope that the Republican Party will recognize its disfigurement before it is too late and will attempt to restore the principles of limited government, fiscal conservatism, and a humble foreign policy that once made it appealing. For this election cycle anyway, it is hardly more than identifying the obvious and expressing the majority’s sentiment to say that the Republican Party deserved to die.

Jeremy Hicks is a 2008 political science graduate, the founder of the Cal Poly Libertarian Club and a Mustang Daily politcal columnist.