The long, long Republican winter

In the face of this peril, conservatives find themselves without leadership, direction, or even a cogent ideological response to the crisis. Conservative lodestars, like Dick Cheney, are warning of Herbert Hoover times if Republicans don’t open up the federal pocketbooks. Even President Bush has admitted that he “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.” And he did not succeed, clearing the way for much more abandoning to come…

So where does that leave the Republican Party? Totally confused. Lines like “redistributing wealth” makes less sense when the wealth is running scared and your husband just got laid off. The “ownership society” becomes a joke when homes and stocks, the things we aspire to own, are consistently losing value. If government is the only bank willing to lend, it is not hard to understand that voters will support government lending.