January 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Bigger Than Bush
By PAUL KRUGMAN

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have
become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the
former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one
of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really
suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy,
masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush
administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the
bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters
happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened
to send the wrong man to the White House.

*****The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in
themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make
itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in
recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to
the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s
shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.*****

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for
government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of
leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage
Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based
on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in
general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared
Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing
well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee A****er,
the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of
the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition
to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re
getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all
these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a
byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words,
government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to
Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip
Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican
National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled
“Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the
controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican
president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process.
And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed
conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his
party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared
that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and
its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than
Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political
strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.

The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk
in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect
Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political
failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country
that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three
branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control
of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today,
Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost
the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end
the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style
strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn
two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic
theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play
the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But
barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they
stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they
will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real
America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more
demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political
philosophy.

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Krugman frequently hits it on all cylinders, as he did here.