Bloodthirsty Liberal

GOP: Get Out Pronto

Another prominent conservative who won’t be voting Republican:

The crumbling GOP base
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  May 31, 2006

LIKE A LOT of conservatives, I won’t be voting Republican in the congressional elections this fall. Admittedly, I won’t have a choice — in Massachusetts, Republican candidates for Congress generally spare voters the trouble of defeating them by not bothering to run in the first place.

But millions of conservatives will have a choice. And the closer Election Day draws, the clearer it becomes that plenty of them will choose not to vote Republican. Unless something changes dramatically — and soon — the GOP is poised to lose its most reliable voters, and with them any hope of keeping its congressional majority.

How disgruntled is the party’s base? In recent polls, fewer than 70 percent of registered Republicans said they approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, a sharp drop from the 90 percent support on which he once could count. Among self-identified conservatives, Bush’s standing is even lower: Just 51 percent rate his performance favorably, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. At a time when the president’s support among Democrats has shrunk to single digits, and when only 1 independent in 4 gives him a positive job rating, the last thing he can afford to lose is the goodwill of his core supporters. But he is losing it.

One hears a lot of this, and Jacoby’s examples of Republican largesse and mismanagement are irrefutable. But I became a Bloodthirsty Liberal, and a supporter of the President, on September 11, 2001 because he clearly articulated (yes, I said Bush clearly articulated) the natures of the attack and of our enemies. Few were as brave as he then to speak of moral absolutes; precious fewer since. I have remained loyal (here and in the voting booth) out of gratitude for his leadership at that time–when I fell to my knees to thank God that Al Gore, for whom I had voted, hadn’t been elected.

Bush said then, and has repeated consistently, that we are engaged in a long-term war. He once termed it a war on terror, but now refers to it more accurately as a war against Islamic facism. I agree, and I am not ready to turn that war over to the feckless, opportunistic Democrats, whose foreign policy ranges from appeasement to isolationism. Will the duties of office change their approach to something more responsible? Possibly. But to reward their craven, demoralizing, self-loathing behavior with political victory would make me nauseated, and would hardly send them the message to get real.

I realize Jacoby is talking only about the congressional elections this fall–not the presidential race in ‘08–and that a protest vote in Massachusetts won’t change the preordained outcome. Neither do I expect to see a “Hillary!” bumper sticker on his car. But as a former Democrat, I had to put up with a lot worse crap than this (partial-birth abortion, lukewarm friendship–if not hostility–toward Israel), and I held rank. It was only their borderline treasonous behavior that drove me first to defend the President, and then to vote for him.

I have come to admire Jacoby and many other conservative columnists (see my tiresome paeans to Mark Steyn), but I won’t be joining any protest votes. I’ve already voted for enough Democrats in my lifetime.