The Cost of Compassionate Conservatism

In today's Washington Post, Claremont Prof. Andrew Busch discusses the Republican party's future:

On the surface, the Republican Party appears to be better poised now than at any time since Calvin Coolidge. Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress for more than a decade (interrupted briefly by Senator James Jeffords's defection in mid-2001), occupied the White House for the last five years, and held a majority of governorships since the 1994 elections. In short, the GOP has come a long way since 1968 or 1980.

So why are Republicans feeling so sour in 2006? Having now held power in Congress for over a decade, there is a sense that the corruption-fighting revolutionaries of 1994 have now become what they once opposed--a problem starkly symbolized by Duke Cunningham's boat house and Ted Stevens's bridge to nowhere. The Republican coalition, considerably bigger than it was in 1975, is now much harder to hold together. More generally, Republican discontent is driven by a growing sense of philosophical malaise--a sense that the party has become unmoored from its most basic philosophical commitments, and that elected Republicans no longer seek power to advance their principles but for its own sake. For Republicans, this transformation is potentially devastating.

My extended comments are here: "Compassionate Conservatism: Death of the Conservative Movement?"