Rudderless

The Hill has a good article today which sheds considerable light on the problems facing the national Republican Party as we enter 2009. In discussing the Party's upcoming election for the new Republican National Committee, the piece implicitly notes that right now, and perhaps even after a chair is selected, the Party lacks a single leader to guide Republicans going forward.

This is one of the many problems that a political party encounters when it does not control the White House. Through good and bad, at the least the President is the leader of his Party, and his agenda, initiatives and personality all move the party along. The party that is out of power may have the luxary of not being saddled with an unpopular chief executive -- who is also the face of the entire government to the voting public -- as was the case with Democrats since 2005, but it also lacks a true leader to guide its movements.

This is precisely where the GOP finds itself right now: looking for a leader to guide its resistence to a Democratic President and a strongly Democratic Congress. It is entirely unclear if men like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Jeb Henserling, and whoever is the next RNC chair have it in them to do the job any more effectively than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid did during the Dems' recent wilderness years. While it remains to be seen, I am guessing that the GOP has a hard time in this department at least through the first half of 2009, especially if the economy begins to improve in any substantive and perceptible fashion,