How Did We Drink Up the Sea?

Peggy Noonan asks not for whom the bell tolls:

What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

Even just last year it could've been done. Republican primary season was the natural time for it to be done. It almost was done. But no. I don't want to say I told you so, but...I'm glad I'm on the side of the fence where we saw it coming. Not just for face-saving purposes. To have missed this would betoken a grave mental malfunction.

Summer of last year I laid it out plainly enough in a post now lost in the American Scene matrix. Fortunately Rod snipped a bit of it, and here it is again. Won't be the last time.

Rejection is not the same as mockery, derision, and disgrace, though there are conservatives who would have no trouble heaping any or all of these three upon Bush. Emotional adulthood requires in this case only firm, clear rejection to be effective. Humiliating the president does nothing to solve the problems facing the United States. Nor does humiliating ourselves in a last-ditch attempt to salve the bleeding wounds of loyalty. Treating the Bush legacy the way Bush treats the surge -- no Plan B, it'll work because it has to -- will not shore up our pride but bring it to ruin, not least because supporting a presidential candidate who cannot repudiate the president in an election focused solely on the bitter fruits of his policies will eventually make Nixons of us all, disillusioned, sorry for ourselves, estranged from our own accomplishments, drinking, muttering, doomed.

[...] What the candidates have already gotten away with, in the way of tepid criticism of tactics in Iraq, has gone over like a dream. Mitt Romney's more adventurous knocks against Bush's leadership have gone unanswered. This is because everyone knows they are accurate. They want more. They want to stop living a public lie. Instead of the national reign of fear predicted by the president's leftist critics, it is the political right that suffers silently in dread. This is a needless shame and waste, and the clock is ticking.

Line up, Republicans. It's battle stations.