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The Republican Party should burn its bridges

On Monday Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., spoke before a packed house in Salomon 101, although an onlooker who didn't understand the proceedings might have guessed by the audience's reaction that they were listening to a high school pep rally and not a failed presidential candidate. Judging by the applause, at least 400 of us Brunonians ate up Kerry's bitter rhetoric criticizing President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina. "Preaching to the choir" might be an understatement.

Yes, the Bush Republican in me was quite frankly spooked by hearing Kerry rail on Bush full blast to thunderous youthful applause.

But although Bush shares my beliefs about this country and its direction, his presidency has been somewhat of a double-edged sword for the Republican Party. For a conservative, he's spent a lot of money, he's a buffoon on the stage, and the case for our preventative war in Iraq wasn't exactly a slam dunk. All of this understandably prevents many liberals from taking his administration with a healthy "the other guys have to win sometime" grain of salt.

Meanwhile, Dubya has generated intense hatred: he is not the unifier we hoped for in 2000. In the 2004 election this didn't bother me, because it made the Democrats so focused on arguing against Bush that they forgot to argue for themselves. However, in 2008 they won't have Bush to fight against anymore, and this passion could germinate into something with an actual ideology - not just a target. That is something the Democrats have lacked since Dick Morris found his way into the Clinton White House.

In spite of tax cuts, the federal government has not shrunk like one would hope in the past six years of Republican administration. Bush has made himself a target by running up large deficits, though I hope this legacy will force the next Democratic administration to curb its social aspirations in order to balance the budget much as Reagan's deficits did after Clinton came to office. But if the Republicans aren't able to keep substantial control in the long run, tax hikes and new social welfare programs could make the expansions necessitated by Sept. 11, the Iraq war and now Katrina, permanent.

The moral? Republicans now need to focus on local power bases, congressional elections and in-party housekeeping, not rallying behind Bush. I've loved the economic reform, strong leadership, moral outlook, and competent foreign policy Bush has given us in the past few years - but we can let him coast to the finish on his own. While Kerry (as The Herald's staff editorial pointed out on Tuesday) and much of the Democratic Party are still focusing on the past - on wishing Iraq never happened and complaining about Bush's shortcomings - we'll be talking about the future and the changes Bush hasn't made.

We don't need to waste our time defending Bush's gaffes anymore; he's given us a lot of good and some bad. Two Supreme Court justices (well, soon), CAFTA and massive tax cuts certainly haven't hurt. Unfortunately, in 2006 and 2008 being a Bush Republican just might.

I'm not the first to reason along these lines. Anybody who follows the headlines can tell you that numerous Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have already begun to jump ship. Republican renegade John McCain and several others recently showed leadership independent of Bush by forming a bipartisan group of moderate senators to prevent the "nuclear option" against judicial filibusters, and simultaneously wresting from Bush a share in the power over the process. More recently, Republicans like Newt Gingrich and presidential hopeful Mit Romney criticized the Bush administration's handling of Katrina relief efforts - Romney called it "an embarrassment."

In shaping the next era of U.S. politics, we Republicans have a chance right now to get a head start on the millions of Bush-haters who are already forming the core of a reinvigorated Democratic Party. It's time to cut the cord and look to the future.

Matt Lawrence '06 digs Seinfeld and Bob Seger.


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