Best medicine for the GOP: time
Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune herein renders the Republican party the wisest possible counsel: patience.
A sample:
A sample:
...The best advice for the GOP is simple: Don't be at the helm when the economy hits the rocks. There is no better way for an incumbent party to assure its defeat than a recession. Richard Nixon proved that in 1960, Jimmy Carter confirmed it in 1980 and George H.W. Bush removed all doubt in 1992...
The difference between 2004 and 2008 is not that Americans became more liberal. It's that the issue of greatest urgency changed. Four years ago, the top concerns were moral values and Iraq. Only 21 percent of Americans ranked the economy as their biggest worry. This year, 63 percent put the economy first...
The good news for Republicans? Despite the powerful undertow of the economy and George W. Bush, the Republican presidential candidate got more than 46 percent of the vote. That doesn't look like a party that has no fundamental appeal. It looks like a party whose fundamental appeal was overwhelmed by transient calamities.
Exactly.
Contrary to all the wishful thinking we're encountering in the media, this is still a Center Right country. Barack Obama won because of the bad economy and a widely-despised incumbent president. Very likely Obama will be the guy in charge when the economy bottoms out this time, and Jimmy Carter's second term will end the same way his first term ended.
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