http://www.townhall.com/columnists/marktapscott/mt20050917.shtmlYes, President Bush gave a good speech Thursday night but no amount of inspiring rhetoric can obscure the fact that Hurricane Katrina may well have drowned the Republican Party as a credible vehicle of conservative reform.
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The GOP’s prospective fall could be much more swift than the Democrats in 1994, however, because of the Internet. Then, the mainstream media’s lock on the news meant it took years for enough voters to finally get the message that it was time for a change in Washington.
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All that’s required for a GOP-majority ending electoral earthquake is five percent or so of the base staying home or voting third party on election day. It’s hard to deny such an earthquake is coming when there are so many signs “out there.” They are most obvious and intense whenever discussion turns to protecting America’s borders.
Millions of illegal aliens are streaming into America and there is no doubt terrorist operatives are among them, yet Bush and the congressional GOP seem to have no clue about the political consequences of not stopping the alien invasion.
Now it appears issues like out-of-control spending are also generating pre-shocks. A fall became certain when people became convinced in the months leading up to the 1994 election that entrenched majority Democrats had lost touch with the electorate, lacked credibility when promising reform and were too attached to the perks of power.
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