Its big electoral victory last fall now six months in the rear-view mirror, the party that perfected the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory seems busily positioning itself to fall on its face in November 2012.
With several attractive potential candidates (John Thune, Mitch Daniels) out of the race, and lightning-rod Sarah Palin still playing footsie, the party looks rudderless and reactive — a puny David against the Obama Goliath.
Relax. Goliath is nowhere near as big as he seems. The party just has to find its David. And he — or she — is out there.
One thing we can safely predict is that neither Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum nor Gary Johnson is likely to be our next president. Too many weaknesses, too much baggage, too narrow an appeal.
Mitt Romney, the putative front-runner, still can’t shake the albatross of RomneyCare and doesn’t seem to want to. And the jury’s still out on Tim Pawlenty, the mild-mannered former Minnesota governor, who’s going to have to show some fire in the belly if he wants to win.
No candidate yet feels like a winner to the party’s base — combative conservatives. And no one’s likely to, as long as the GOP establishment is trying to appeal to the quasi-mythical milquetoast independent voters who pull up their petticoats and flee at the slightest sounds of conflict.
The party needs a leader who can clearly and passionately make its case: No milquetoasts need apply. He (or she) will need to calmly cut through the media fog: Obama is protected by a journalistic phalanx too heavily invested to see him rejected at the polls.
Certainly not over trivial things like a $14 trillion national debt, soaring deficits, bankrupt entitlements like Medicare and Social Security and an increasingly arrogant and out-of-touch president who would rather party with Queen Elizabeth in London than cut short yet another glorified vacation and tend to Joplin, Mo., and other devastated cities of the Midwest.
The 2010 elections showed what the GOP could do even without a national leader. The base — energized by liberal overreach and Tea Party pushback — roared, and took down Democrats all across the country, not just in Congress, but at the state and local levels, too.
So think how much more powerful this movement will be if somebody steps up to lead it. Far from being helpless, the GOP David is facing a personally popular but structurally weak Goliath who was drinking a Guinness in Ireland when he was just upstaged by the Israeli prime minister at a joint session of Congress. (How many Americans are now wondering why we can’t have as forceful a leader as Benjamin Netanyahu?)
It’s not like the GOP is without forceful leaders. New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie, who says he won’t run, has become the darling of many on the right thanks to his blunt, no-nonsense and, yes, confrontational style. Texas Gov. Rick Perry also claims he’s out, but his track record in the Lone Star state — including unparalleled job creation and low taxes — have launched a serious draft-Perry movement.
The election’s not for 18 months, but it’s time to get real. On Tuesday, the GOP lost a “safe” seat in a special election in upstate New York. The Republican candidate apparently thought she could waltz into Washington instead of taking the fight to her conservative Democrat opponent, who was busy demagoguing the Paul Ryan plan for Medicare reform. Lesson learned?
In the upcoming battle for the country’s future, the Republicans actually hold most of the cards. All they need is somebody to play them — smartly, effectively, confidently and unapologetically.
As David knew, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. All he needed was his slingshot — and courage.