GOP high water mark: March 21, 2005 [View All]

[XanaDUer]

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2008/11/03/bookmaned_1103_3DOT.html

Another defeat — although of somewhat less historic significance — looms Tuesday for the modern Republican Party. In the Senate, Republicans may fall below the 40 votes needed to filibuster. In the House, they may lose 20 seats or more. And unless the polls are mistaken, the GOP’s grip on the presidency will end as well.

Conceivably, a defeat of that size could exile Republicans from power for a decade or even a generation, particularly given the party’s poor reputation among younger voters. If so, when future historians go looking for the high water mark of the Republican Party, the moment when its power in this era peaked and then began to decline, I’d suggest the date March 21, 2005.



Slowly, voters began to realize that in the eyes of GOP leadership, government was just a useful weapon in the culture wars, not a tool to try to improve the lives of the American people. Many voters who had themselves thought of government in those terms began to question that belief, a process that quickened as the nation’s economic crisis deepened. As a result, they began to seek leaders who took a more serious approach to government, leaders to whom competence was more important than ideology.