Peggy Noonan on the Republicans' challenge

Posted by Mitch Kokai at 2:00 PM

The Wall Street Journal columnist doesn't have much good to say about the GOP today. She lobs especially strong criticism at Republicans in Congress:

Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

This reminds me of our recent conversation on the same topic:

There were two generations of conservative leaders who went to Washington, and some of them tried to do big things, but many of them tried to simply self-perpetuate, and they took on the ways of Washington. They became big spenders, government control people, bullies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They have made the political philosophy that they sprang from appear to be somewhat discredited. Well, it’s a big and vibrant thing. It can’t be discredited by them. They are mere punks. But it’s not looking so good at the moment, you know, and you’ve got to be frank about that. Can it come back? Of course it can.

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