A Suddenly Hopeful Scenario For The Election

I’ve been saying since last February that there is no good outcome in store this election year, since Bush would almost certainly be re-elected, which would strengthen Bush in his disastrous course of dismantling any remaining conservatism in the Republican party and turning it permanently into a liberal party. However, unfolding events reveal another and more hopeful possible outcome for this election.

One of the concerns of traditionalists about Bush’s leadership has been that he consistently leads the Republicans to compromise with the Democrats instead of to fight the Democrats on principle. We have felt that in order to have a chance at a reconstituted Republican party that would stand against the left, Bush had to lose and Bushism be discredited. In a sense, we were thinking strategically like jihadists who believe in the necessity of defeating the Near Enemy (in this case, the Bushist wing of the GOP) in order to turn the fight more effectively against the Far Enemy (the Democrats).

But, based on the dramatic Gallup poll that shows Bush ahead by 14 points over Kerry, and other polling results that show Bush putting New Jersey and New York into play, the possibility suddenly looms of a national electoral catastrophe for the Democrats. If this were to happen, then the Far Enemy would already have been routed, so we wouldn’t have to worry about him any more. At the same time, the resulting unassailable GOP majorities in the Congress might greatly strengthen the conservative wing of the GOP (assuming such a wing still exists at this point), allowing them to oppose Bush’s leftward agenda. In effect, instead of national politics being divided between a leftist Democratic party (the Far Enemy) and a leftward moving Bushist Republican party (the Near Enemy), the division would be between the Bushist wing of the Republican party (the Near Enemy), and the conservative wing (the good guys), with the conservatives liberated by the Democratic catastrophe from the need always to keep their conservatism in check in order to maintain GOP unity in the face of the Democrats. As a result, instead of the Near Enemy being given a boost by Bush’s victory (Bush’s amnesty-and-open-borders proposal, for example), the Near Enemy would face renewed conservative opposition.

So, according to my logic (and I welcome any criticism on this since I obviously haven’t worked out all the angles), if Bush is going to win, it might be better for him to win in a nationwide blowout in which he takes 40 or more states from the hapless Kerry and drives the Congressional Democrats into at least temporary oblivion. There may be a hopeful scenario for this election after all.