Hee-Haw Republicans (Revised, Shortened)

What's happening to the Republicans this week reminds me a lot of an old "Hee Haw" song.

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

It's hard to say what was worse. Bush at 26%, Rudy's South Carolina chair getting arrested on coke charges, Romney's people masquerading as cops--it was all awful. But I think the absolute worst "gloom and despair" moment was reserved for Congressional Republicans. In an interview with the London Times, Gen. Petraeus emphasized that September "is a deadline for a report not a deadline for a change in policy." No matter how good or bad things are in September, Gen. Petraeus is not going to recommend a change in the "surge" policy.

Not to mix John Donne, Hemingway, and Hee Haw metaphors, but the Petraeus interview tolled the bell of imminent death for Congressional Republicans. Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Gordon Smith, John Boehner, and other Republicans have expected the September report to signal a "change of direction" in Iraq. They viewed the surge as the "last chance" to succeed in Iraq and the September report as the time to start withdrawing if it wasn't working.

Changing policy in September would also have given Republican candidates fourteen months to recover their political standing before the 2008 elections. That would have been fourteen glorious months where troop withdrawals were being regularly announced, American casualties were always falling, and Iraq wasn't front page news.

But that dream is "gone, gone, gone."

What the Republicans have instead is an already failed surge policy stretching out to election day. That means more problems recruiting candidates, more problems problems raising money, and more problems motivating Republicans and potential Republicans to vote. In other words, it means fewer Republicans in Congress. The tolling of the Petraeus bell means perhaps eight years of Hillary Clinton in the White House and Barack Obama waiting in the wings. In a recent interview, Newt Gingrich was being funny when he wondered if the GOP would recover by 2016 or 2020.

In other words, the Republican Party has become an endless "hee-haw" re-run.

Larry Sabato unimaginatively refers to the discouragement of Republicans as the "Bush depression." It would be better to just call them "Hee-Haw" Republicans.