Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has her usual insightful weekly columnar observations in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal. Mostly, it’s about McCain and Romney. But then at the end, Noonan lays out these pungent graphs:
“On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, ‘I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party. It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it!’
“This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. [emphasis mine – MT] He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
“Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.
“And this needs saying, because if you don’t know what broke the elephant you can’t put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can’t trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.
“I believe that some of the ferocity of the pundit wars is due to a certain amount of self-censorship. It’s not in human nature to enjoy self-censorship. The truth will out, like steam from a kettle. It hurts to say something you supported didn’t work. I would know. But I would say of these men (why, in the continuing age of Bill Clinton, does the emoting come from the men?) who are fighting one another as they resist naming the cause for the fight: Sack up, get serious, define. That’s the way to help.”
I’m not sure that I agree with such a blanket and singular condemnation of Bush, but there is no doubt that very early in his first year in the White House there came a moment when those who were paying attention glimpsed the philosophical hollowness at the heart of the then-new administration.
It was the moment Bush agreed, no, rushed headlong to give up the voucher component of the No Child Left Behind Act to mollify Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, and other NEA-beholden senators in both parties.
That’s when the observant knew that on issues critical to achieving fundamental conservative reform, Bush was quite willing to use them to get elected, but he was happy, even eager it seemed in the voucher case, to throw them overboard at the first hint of liberal opposition.
The NCLB collapse was moment when the sundering Noonan refers to – which I contend had been put on hold by the 2000 campaign – reappeared as a significant but under-appreciated factor in the political affairs ofthe nation.
Then came 9/11 and for a moment, the nation united behind Bush. Murmurings about the worrisome scenes from the first seven months of the administration were laid aside. That moment passed with the Medicare Prescription drug benefit program and how it was rammed through Congress – suspending the rules to enable GOP leaders to browbeat and/or bribe enough spineless representatives to gain passage. At that point, the sundering became all but unstoppable, buffered one last time by the prospect of John Kerry in the White House.
Taking account of these things doesn’t thereby deny Bush the immense credit he deserves for taking down the Taliban and freeing Iraq. And John Roberts and Samuel Alito are Bush gifts to the nation that will continuing giving for generations ahead.
But presidents must be judged on the totality of their records and the sad truth is that Bush almost certainly will leave behind a GOP grappling with the reality of another lengthy exile to minority status or worse, an outright descent into political oblivion. It didn’t have to be that way. And, politics being politics, may yet take a different course.
That’s my take.
Anybody else care to offer a view on Noonan’s point?
UPDATE: Not so fast, Peggy
Captain’s Quarters’ Ed Morrissey thinks Peggy Noonan’s ascription of sole responsibility for the destruction of the GOP to George Bush is a little “over the top,” adding that “the party has lost exactly one national cycle in the last four. I don’t consider them dead after a single setback, and anyone who does appears more interested in garnering attention than in providing trenchant analysis.”
Ouch!
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