Tales from the Trail

Have Republicans really met their Waterloo? George W. Bush’s former speech writer David Frum thinks so. And he may have a point, though making it in public has proved costly.

Only six months ago, Republican opposition to healthcare reform was whacking away gleefully at President Barack Obama’s approval ratings. An army of conservative Tea Party activists were flooding Washington’s National Mall in a show of force against the Obama legislative agenda. And Republican nice guy Scott Brown was on his merry way to a Senate upset in bluest of blue Massachusetts.

Now healthcare reform is law and newly energized Democrats are moving to counter those evils of Wall Street that voters love to hate. The grass-roots army has brought Republicans one or two liabilities. And Obama’s job approval rating shows signs of firming up.

Meanwhile, whatever happened to Scott Brown? Well, he actually took that bipartisan independent-thinking stuff seriously and  joined Democrats to approve the Senate jobs bill.  As a result, people back home say his folk hero victory has backfired on the GOP.

But Brown and Frum may not be the only Republicans at odds with the straight and narrow. Before Frum left the American Enterprise Institute, Joe Klein says he privately disclosed that the think tank had ordered its scholars to keep schtum about Obamacare. Why? Because they agreed with too many of the president’s objectives.

Republicans are now regrouping to contend with the remainder of the Obama legislative agenda for 2010. Meanwhile, campaign strategies for the November congressional elections are still a work in progress.

But is it a good sign for their party if Republicans are jettisoning those who don’t march in lock-step?

Too much unity proved to be a problem for the Bush White House. They even had a name for it. What was it again? Oh yeah, Groupthink.

Photo credits: Reuters/Thierry Roge (Battle of Waterloo  reenactors); Reuters/Official Handout (Final House healthcare vote); Reuters/Larry Downing (George W. Bush)

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