Beyond Doom & Gloom
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
EDITORIAL Beyond Doom & Gloom The Washington Post’s front page story on the Republican Governors Association meeting last week carried the headline “Republican Governors Meet, Glumly.”...
...One pillar of any Republican comeback will surely be successful practical governance at the state level...
...It’s also the case that McCain’s best stretch was the two weeks in early September after he picked Palin...
...So history suggests that statehouses are where a lot of the GOP action will be over the next four years...
...EDITORIAL Beyond Doom & Gloom The Washington Post’s front page story on the Republican Governors Association meeting last week carried the headline “Republican Governors Meet, Glumly...
...Who are the Kemps and Gingriches today...
...The mood in Miami was hardheaded and forward-looking...
...There are plenty of other Republican governors and ex-governors who would be competent and plausible nominees in 2012...
...They’re likely to be the stars of the party over the next few years—those who govern successfully and show an ability to get reelected...
...Can she rise to the occasion...
...So it seems unlikely that Palin hurt McCain’s chances...
...The candidate in 2012 is unlikely to be the problem...
...The question is whether, at the national level, Republicans will have a compelling platform to run on...
...GOP revivals depend on fresh and bold thinking at the national level...
...All of this made them pretty upbeat...
...McCain won those voters 51 to 48 percent...
...The governors, especially in private, were anticipating with some pleasure the prospect of governing freed of the shadow of either a Republican Congress or a Republican White House...
...McCain lost those voters, 53 to 45 percent...
...But the examples of the late 1970s and the early 1990s suggest something else, too...
...Those other circumstances, I suppose, would have been that it was a Democratic governors’ meeting...
...Figures like Jack Kemp redefi ned Republican economic policy between 1977 and 1980...
...The gathering didn’t seem particularly doomish and gloomish to me...
...The fi eld is wide open for the ambitious and the daring...
...Among her peers she may be in a class by herself—like Reagan or Barack Obama...
...It will be almost as important— and more interesting—to fi gure out how to save capitalism from its own worst aspects and most damaging tendencies...
...After the jump, the Post bannered its account, “Doom and Gloom at GOP Governors’ Meeting...
...In the national exit poll, slightly more than half the voters said John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin was not a factor at all or was a minor factor in their vote...
...But the one polling question that focused on that most directly would suggest she was not...
...And they fi gure one of their number will likely be the presidential nominee in 2012...
...It’s also about political leadership...
...Then a governor, George W. Bush, retook the White House in 2000...
...Thus the Post asserted in its article on the Republican governors that “some polling at the end of the campaign suggested Palin was a drag on the ticket...
...And, after the previous Democratic takeover of the White House, in 1976, it was a former governor, Ronald Reagan, who led the comeback and took the presidency...
...The media remain desperate to deny that she can, and even to deny her a chance to try...
...William Kristol...
...They know their efforts in state capitals will help redefi ne the party nationally...
...The Republican revival of the early and mid-1990s—after the across-the-board defeat of 1992, when the fi rst Bush administration was booted out with 38 percent of the vote—was due in part to the examples of effective state governance by Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and John Engler in Michigan, to say nothing of Rudy Giuliani’s efforts in New York City...
...To see Sarah Palin at the Republican Governors Association was to wonder at a natural politician...
...And, of course, politics isn’t just—or even mostly— about ideas...
...had brought into being a very different Republican party from that of the last days of the fi rst Bush administration...
...Amazingly, 41 percent said the Palin choice was an important factor in their vote...
...Pickups in any of these states would make governors even more central to the future of the GOP...
...After a fi nancial meltdown leading to a severe recession on the Republican watch, and the fl ailing response of the Bush administration and the incoherence of congressional Republicans, one area that invites urgent new thinking is economic policy...
...And Republicans could pick up governorships in states like Virginia in 2009 and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan in 2010—in all of which they have promising candidates...
...But this kind of candor from an elected offi cial, in other circumstances, would have warranted a headline like “Candor, Self-Criticism Mark Governors’ Meeting” from the Post...
...It’s true that the governors were realistic about the GOP defeats of 2006 and 2008...
...It will be important, over the next four years, to fi ght to save free-market capitalism from the Obama administration...
...By 1994, Newt Gingrich and Co...
...Palin is a phenomenon, and her future is unpredictable...
...As Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal said, “They fi red us with cause...
Vol. 14 • November 2008 • No. 10
