STIFLE NEOCONS, USE HORSE SENSE

October 5, 2008 12:16 am

RICHMOND

--Win or lose on Nov. 4, the Republican Party's troubles will have just begun. Should John McCain and Sarah Palin be elected, their administration sails out on treacherous waters. McCain in the campaign has proved himself capable of saying almost anything, without regard to truth or consistency. He has also appeared crotchety, short-tempered, and impatient.

Palin remains a wonderment: Poorly informed and unqualified for the vice presidency, she has one attribute absolutely necessary should, God forbid, she ever occupy the Oval Office--utter self-assurance.

Even in good times, this combination of qualities in the leaders of the executive branch would give pause. Given the difficulties the next White House will face--an unnecessary yet protracted war in the Middle East, an economy that has problems too complex for either McCain or Palin to comprehend, and a needlessly reignited "culture war"--prospects for a successful administration seem dim.

Should the Republicans lose, the party must re-assess its strengths and weaknesses, and this is a group that seems ill-equipped to do so. The most intelligent people in its ranks--the neoconservatives--are also wrong about almost everything to which they have applied their impressive intellects. That's because they are ideologues who combine the worst aspects of the old anti-communism out of which their forbears--Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, et al.--emerged, and the hyper-patriotic post-Goldwater Christianist right with whom their sons and daughters now play footsie.

One looks about for another force within the party to push back and finds John Hagel. The Nebraska senator seems, on the surface, anyway, to embody the qualities of American conservatism at its best: prudence, flexibility, courage, an openness to facts, and genuine convictions. But he's retiring, and one can hardly blame the man.

Then there are the "Ripon Republicans," who for the last 30 years have taken a fall every time they said they'd stand up to right-wing ideologues. Christie Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor (now a lobbyist), is one of the last of these hapless and gutless "moderates." A few years ago she wrote a book about the Republicans whose whiny title, "It's My Party, Too," said it all. She can cry if she wants to, but it's not gonna help.

Alan Pell Crawford is the author of "Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson" and "Thunder on the Right: The 'New Right' and the Politics of Resentment."