Republicans across the country have been scratching their heads for the past week wondering what went wrong with their party.
The funny thing about this year’s election is what happened here in Chicago, Barack Obama’s hometown. If the GOP was to pay a price this year, you would have expected that it would be felt most intensely here in the Chicago area.
But compared to their colleagues in other parts of the country, the Republican Party in the Chicago area didn’t fare too badly. I believe the only U.S. House seat that turned over from Republican to Democrat here was in the 10th Congressional District (someone please correct me if I’m mistaken).
But by and large the GOP suffered major setbacks, a trend that began in 2006. In a column published Nov. 2 in the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman predicted that President Bush (although he wasn’t running for anything) would be the big loser in the general election. The outcome would be a referendum on his tenure in office for nearly eight years, Chapman wrote.
Chapman was right. As head of the party, Bush clung to more failed policies than I’ve ever seen come from the Oval Office. And congressional Republicans for the most part sat back and allowed him to send the nation into a tailspin.
Now it’s not that every problem we’re experiencing is solely the fault of Bush and the Republicans.
The mortgage crisis and the meltdown of the financial industry have roots stretching back through several presidential administrations. The tax cuts approved by Congress after Bush took office didn’t cause the credit markets to freeze nor compel people to take out home mortgages that they couldn’t afford. Many factors contributed to the economic calamity we’re enduring, and a lot people of all political stripes share the blame.
While I believe members of Bush’s White House manipulated evidence against Saddam Hussein, virtually everyone was convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the March 2003 invasion. I have long argued that Bush should have waited to stabilize Afghanistan before invading Iraq. But in post-9/11 America where the biggest threat came from that which we couldn’t predict, who wanted to wait around to see if everything we believed about Iraq was a bunch of hooey?
Nonetheless, Bush and his advisers made one huge mistake after another when it came to Iraq. The tax cuts were a good idea in the short run. But the loss of this revenue coupled with the extraordinary amount of money needed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention all the other spending goodies that an alleged conservative Congress allowed itself), the drain on our budget and the economy has been overwhelming.
So what can Republicans do now? Not much, aside from waiting for the next election to see if their popularity has risen some.
They can try and obstruct everything Obama and the Democratic Congress try to do, but this would be counterproductive. Sure, they shouldn’t be expected to abandon their principles. But most Americans voted for change and solutions, not gridlock that leads nowhere.
Republicans should admit where they made mistakes and follow up on their vow to do better. A sense of humility about the election losses and some candid talk about their shortcomings would go a long way to regaining the public’s respect.
Everyone in government should remember that our political system gets its dynamism not from the triumph of one ideology over another but rather the constant give and take between different factions. We exhibit our greatness most when we recall that all Americans deserve a voice in the democratic process — not just conservatives or radicals, moderates or extremists, collectivists or liberals.
“E pluribus unum” — does that phrase ring a bell?
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