Looking back, looking forward

As I see it, this year the bottomless arrogance of the Republican Party was tested and came up wanting.

The Party selected McCain as a candidate in an attempt to win over the centre. Of all the possible nominees, McCain was the one who least represented Republican "core values" and had even made a nominal reputation opposing his own Party. It was a fairly smart move on the part of the Party to distance itself from Bush.

From there, it all went wrong.

The Party pushed McCain to the right, forced 'advisers' on him who were really little more than smear artists, and turned their man into the "anti-Obama" rather than a candidate with superior policies and qualifications. Resting on their laurels, they utterly failed to create state organising efforts or conduct voter registration drives in the period between McCain's nomination and Obama's nomination. Chronically behind in polling, the Party then selected Palin in a horribly misguided belief that women will vote for another woman regardless of their policy positions. And thus, any hope of winning over the centre was lost.

Beyond that, the Party arrogantly took for granted that any state that voted for Bush in 2004 would do so again. By "energising their base", the McCain campaign further repelled the centre. To seal their fate, they then pinned all their hopes on racism.

Now they are left with a Party firmly convinced that the new President is a Muslim radical with a secret agenda, bent on destroying America. Early indications seem to be that the Party intends to move further right, and deeper into the artificial reality created by their media voices. With no capacity for self-reflection (that's for wimps and those who don't understand God's Will), they once again arrogantly believe their own spin. And even more importantly, they believe that the vast majority of the country also believes it. This is not the path back to power.

We still have the same punditry that cheered on the McCain campaign and dutifully passed on all of the Republican smears as truth. In 2009, we can continue to count on the pundits to wring their hands in public over Obama's "excessive liberalism", to second guess every decision, and to constantly point to signs of Obama's "fading popularity". Any policies that do not come straight from the wingnut realm will be portrayed as "divisive". The economy will not improve overnight, and most people realise this. The majority also see that what passed for a "plan" from the Republicans will only make things worse.

The Republican Party lacks the ability to win the electorate over to their side, but they have the ability to make Obama look unpopular. We have to keep asking where the Marxist hell that these people predicted would emerge from Obama's election is. We have to keep making clear what the Republicans would do if they were in office. And we have to stand up to those who insist that not continuing Bush's policies is "divisive".