The Next Election

[posted by Callimachus]

One of Andrew Sullivan's remaining GOP readers lays out the next election as he sees it:

Democrats have made an enormously stupid bet about the Republican Party: you can see it in their blogs. They have told each other that we were sure to nominate Elmer Gantry and go to the country with a Bush Clone like George Allen. They have sworn, up and down, that Rudy could not get the nomination. Someone like Kos or Josh Marshall will never, ever get this about us - we are an extremely pragmatic group of people who like to win and aren't willing to lose just because liberal bloggers and the Media say we should lose.

Authenticity vs. inauthenticity. That's the story of 2008. Rudy is real. You can touch and feel the Catholic kid from the Neighborhood. You know that some of his friends died in the Towers. Rudy is real. McCain has sometimes tossed away his authenticity he earned the hard way, and let's face it, he's not in the best of health. Romney is not quite authentic but Lord how he tries.

Hillary is not real. She's inauthentic. There's your story, Andrew. An entire army of front men and pet chihuhuas like Begala or Wolfson cannot alter her inauthenticity one whit: she's poison and there's not a damn thing she can do about it. Your liberal writers are killing her slowly, starting with Dowd, because liberals know their own kind. They are just slow in getting around to pulling the maskie off the droog. More and more liberals, the ones with money and influence and power, are refusing to be conned, or intimidated, by the Clintons one last time.

What no one has the answer to yet is Obama. He's the Mystery Date. The girls all love him; but is he Authentic or is he made up, or is he Condi Lite? So far, count me unimpressed: too many platitudes in the books. We'll find out.

Bush tried to be real. He did. But he blew it with the people and with the center of the country. Rumsfeld killed him. You can only lose that bond once and you never get it back. Rudy is something we haven't had in some time, a chance to return to the promise of Reagan and Goldwater, and a shot at authenticity.

Interesting. More than a year ago, Kevin Drum said it was a dead certainty that the next president would be a Democrat. At the time, I thought that audacious. Now, I tend to think it's a safe bet. So is Sullivan's friend here just dizzy from the Kool-Aid, or is he on to something.

[While I understand the importance of coat-tails and Congresses, I still tend to vote personalities and personal ethics, not parties. But I'm receptive to the argument that a Democrat ought to take the helm, just so 1. the Republicans can have some down time to check themselves into collective rehab, and 2. the Democrats as a whole can get serious about the real challenges and opportunities and dangers in the world and stop seeing everything in terms of That Man in the White House.]