The Long Road Back

British Conservatives may be reaching the end of their term in the wilderness. American Republicans look to be just beginning theirs

I have an article in the British Spectator on the grim condition of the Republican party at present. Key paragraph:

Obama has been in office nearly three months. Far and away his most important initiative over that time has been to continue George W. Bush’s costly Troubled Asset Rescue Plan. Next most important: a mortgage rescue plan that likewise follows ideas bequeathed by his predecessor. Obama has not yet raised taxes. He has not yet introduced a healthcare plan. He has not yet detailed a climate-change policy. He has declined to rescue the automobile companies.

During the campaign, Democrats promised pro-union changes in labour law. In office, one Democratic senator after another has broken ranks against this. Republicans have mused that Democrats might alter broadcasting regulations in ways inimical to conservative talk radio. No sign of action there either.

Yet to listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his audience that he has not been able to ‘debunk’ fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.