By Staff
A political activist who dropped by our office Friday could be heard venting about the unenthused complacency of the Cass County Grand Old Party (GOP) despite an increasingly energized Democratic Party in Cass and Berrien counties.
Problem is, he's a Republican, a fixture at many Lincoln Day dinners during the glory Reagan years.
Newt Gingrich and other reformers who stormed Congress in 1994 to carry on the Reagan revolution have been replaced by ideological politicians whose priority to keep the levers of power firmly in their grasp overrides other considerations, including former Florida congressman Mark Foley's alleged cyberstalking of teen-age male congressional pages.
This "tawdry Washington sex scandal" prompted Time, the national news magazine, to illustrate its Oct. 16 cover story on a party that has strayed from its ideals with the unflattering north end of an elephant going south.
Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the longest-serving Republican House speaker in history (who ascended in 1998, ironically, because Robert Livingston of Louisiana had an extramarital affair), vowed not to resign in an unintentionally revealing sound bite: "Where does that leave us? If the Democrats sweep, then we'd have no ability to fight back and get our message out."
Just 12 years ago corruption was a central contention in Republicans turning Democrats out of office after 40 years as the majority party.
Contract with America reformers of 1994 revered three conservative principles as sacrosanct: fiscal responsibility, national security and moral values.
Those of us who were not enthralled with the overreaching revolutionaries, whether it was Gingrich, Bob Dole or Reagan himself, liked to point out when they failed to follow their own rules.
The triumphant conservative transition was complete with the inauguration of President George W. Bush.
The GOP has ruled the White House and both Houses of Congress for most of Bush's six-year administration.
Governing has been another matter, with a huge disconnect from the Republican spending ideal that produced record U.S. budget deficits.
Shifting the war on terror focus away from Afghanistan to invading Iraq in the name of toppling Saddam Hussein not only has not brought 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to justice, the government's own intelligence experts agree the decision to create a model Mideast democracy so far yielded "a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."
Like a scene out of George Orwell's brilliant book "Animal Farm," once in power the system began changing Republicans more than they were changing it.
They disdained compromise as weak-willed and dropped their demand for term limits.
The pious party which railed vociferously while impeaching President Bill Clinton's moral conduct chose a decidedly different course in crafting a political response designed for damage control to ABC News' Foley revelations.
GOP leaders, some of whom knew of some of the e-mails last November, seemed more motivated by containing electoral blowback Nov. 7 than protecting young pages in their care from pedophile peril.
Foley, 52, wasn't even stripped of his co-chairmanship of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
As more salacious e-mails surfaced, Kirk Fordham, a former Foley aide, fanned a growing fire by alleging he warned Hastert's staff of Foley's "inappropriate behavior" more than three years ago, which Chief of Staff Scott Palmer denied.
The GOP's chances of holding on to the House seemed to be brightening before the Foley scandal with gas prices receding and national debate revolving around its strongest issue, terrorism and national security.
Now, in one national poll, two-thirds of respondents say they are more likely to vote for a Democratic congressional candidate – a turnaround from the 51 percent to 40 percent margin the GOP enjoyed as recently as August.
A Pew Research Center poll likewise showed a slide in Republican support among church goers.
Not that that bastion of the base will be scurrying into the Democratic column, but they might stay home election day.
So, it's easy to see how local grassroots Republicans who believe in their party's ideals could feel disenchanted.