The Rotting GOP and Its Conservative Refugees

For the latter, see Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party, who recently told The New York Times: "I think nationally and here, people are kind of tired of the way [the Bush] administration has been conducting the policies of this country."

Yeah, we're just kind of tired of it. A bit fatigued. A trifle melancholy at a little unattractive behavior in pursuit of a few rather unappealing policies.

Now why, you ask, was the Times quoting Ms. Waak in her somewhat stoic, Zen-like appraisal of the last eight years?

Because the paper, you see, was engaged in asking various party poobahs and tuned-in academics why, in their opinion, "there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats." Which indeed there has been, going on several years now, with said reduction and respective rise being substantial.

What's more, reported the Times, "voting experts" -- now listen up, these are the experts talking -- "say the registration numbers may signal the beginning of a move away from Republicans that could affect local, state and national politics over several election cycles."

Lord, even you have no idea of the depth of my regret at not having become either a pollster or "voting expert" -- a select member of that narrow, political cognoscenti that spends it highly paid days either solemnly warning, for instance, that a candidate's statistical lead can go up, down, or level off, or that vastly lower Republican registration numbers may signal a move away from Republicans.

At any rate, one of these experts put an even broader spin on the shifting partisan landscape: "This is very suggestive that there is a fundamental change going on in the electorate," said a senior fellow and voting-pattern maven at the Brookings Institution.

And as for causation, those party poobahs were in general agreement: "Those in charge of state Democratic parties cite a national displeasure with the Bush administration as an impetus for the changing numbers." Such as our delicate Ms. Waak and her proffered suspicion that folks are "kind of tired" of the Bushies.

Yet I -- as well as the "tired" body politic -- are prone to put matters in a far less delicate way, with apologies to Ms. Waak and all her partisan colleagues who settle for eviscerated appraisals of mere "displeasure" at the Bush administration.

We are not "displeased," inasmuch as that prodigiously tepid characterization is a monstrous insult to outrage.

I recognize that to speak of "outrage" these days is to employ, itself, a tired word. It's nearly clicheish, and the poor thing has been worked almost to death. But what better, more appropriate, more accurate word is there?

For eight years we've suffered from the Bush administration's two exclusive and alternating modes of operation: When it wasn't engaging in prosecutable criminality, it was busy with impeachable incompetence.

You name it, from epic fiscal mismanagement to the usurpation of legislative authority, from illegal surveillance to two monumentally ill-conceived wars and occupations, from plutocratic thievery and unbridled corporatism to the wholesale disregard of working-class troubles, from medieval torture to the mangling of the public's trust -- it has all, all of it, occupied a corrupt, cavernous pit of a gothic horror story of unprecedented and lasting national shame.

Oh my, do I sound "displeased"? Well, if that's the genteel case, so also are those massive herds of conscientious conservatives who are fleeing formal affiliation with what was once their Grand Old Party. For, courtesy the Bush administration, it has rotted to the core, and they know it.

And that, I submit, is no overstatement.