For Americans who understand how important a healthy Republican Party is to our nation, last night’s polling should give pause.<\/p>\n
The GOP is crippled, divided, uncertain and largely leaderless.<\/p>\n
Clearly, Barack Obama won the race by virtue of his talents and steadiness under pressure. But his victory — and the humiliation of the GOP — also reflected the last eight years of George W. Bush.<\/p>\n
John McCain ran as a sort of quasi-anti-Bush, tentatively trying to move the party’s faithful away from the Bush-Cheney-Rove axis.<\/p>\n
His selection of Sarah Palin clearly blunted that message. At a time when Americans demanded competence, McCain blinked and chose another Bush-like figure.<\/p>\n
Palin is now a major force in the GOP. But her fate will largely be decided by the monumental question now facing Republicans:<\/p>\n
What do we do with W?<\/p>\n
There is already a movement afoot to recast President Bush as a good man who was misunderstood or maligned. A man of principle who will be vindicated by history.<\/p>\n
His brand of politician – small town folksy, charismatic populist, ideological – has strong appeal among conservatives. Which is why Governor Palin will linger as a presence.<\/p>\n
But last night’s outcome suggests that the GOP needs a new direction, one that breaks cleanly with the era defined by Mr. Bush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Americans who understand how important a healthy Republican Party is to our nation, last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}