A Unique Republican Dissent

This piece from Rich Lowry, one of the deans of the conservative movement, caught my eye today. This was mostly because Lowry's name appeared under the headline "The Right Needs to Get Centered." Lowry, the editor of the National Review, a Fox News mainstay, and a once-rabid Clinton hater, has apparently gotten religion, and now believes that the GOP will need to move to towards the center to regain its political bearings (not to mention its power).

While the article is not terribly insightful, and Lowry has a hard time getting to both his thesis and the reason for the headline, he finally hits it at the very end:

As grim as things now seem for the right, there's no reason to descend into the slough of despond. Just four years ago, Republicans were hailing the advent of a new Republican majority, remember? One of the wisest baseball cliches is: "You're never as good as you seem when you're winning and never as bad as you seem when you're losing."

Even in unimaginably challenging conditions for Republicans, the ideological composition of the election was essentially unchanged from 2004. Only 22 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals. The rest were moderates or conservatives.

It is indeed, as conservatives have been insisting in recent days, a center-right country. The question is how to appeal to the center again.

I could not agree more with his cliche. When you lose, your losses are always magnified to mean more than they do, and when you win, you are always made out to be better than you are. In other words, as grim as it is for Republicans today, they are not going to be a permanent minority, regardless of the hopes of some Democrats.

That being said, while Lowry is right, his article is bereft of anything constructive besides a post mortem for John McCain. This kind of speaks well for why the GOP is in such bad shape right now: its leaders cannot fully agree on a solution to move forward. Yes, there is time now, but if Lowry is serious in his goal of pushing the GOP to the center, I wonder if he will suceed, or if powerful voices in the party like Rush Limbaugh or Jeb Henserling will win out in moving the Republican Party even further to the right. With the moderate voices in the party just about all dead or retired, I wonder who would spur this push; indeed, Lowry is still no moderate. Therefore, my money is still on Rush and Jeb.