An all-too predictable headline from the New York Times:
Rove Is Using Threat of Loss to Stir G.O.P.
In meetings at the White House, aboard Air Force One and in candidates’ home states, Mr. Rove is trying to rally Republicans to stand by the president and his agenda.
He has focused in particular on uniting them behind the administration’s proposals to overhaul immigration, which include guest worker provisions that conservatives despise; the Iraq war, which has driven Mr. Bush’s poll numbers sharply downward; and the Medicare prescription drug program, which the administration says will cost $872 billion from 2006 to 2014 and which Mr. Bush backed enthusiastically despite complaints from conservatives that it was a vast expansion of the social welfare state.
That’s an interesting strategy. Instead of offering them what they want – which many of them wouldn’t buy at this point anyhow – sell them harder on what they hate. The thing is, not even Hillary is enough to scare conservatives to vote for the faux conservatives anymore.
And remember, these programs were supposed to be part of a pragmatic program that would make the administration more popular. The lesson, as always, is that sticking by your principles is not only the correct moral stance, in the long term it is the more effective one.
I quite look forward to the increasingly frantic whining and pleading from the desperate “conservative” commentariat already. You made your deal with the devil, folks, now enjoy the flames.