Not Your Father’s Oldmobile 0

The Oldsmobile was a middle-of-the-road middle of the price range car, sort of a Pontiac without any of that GTO pizzazz.

The Oldsmobile is no more. So too is your father’s Republican Party.

I believe that many persons, especially older persons (a demographic that includes me) who consider themselves Republicans (a demographic that excludes me) don’t realize how little today’s Republican Party shares with the Republican Party of their upbringing, the party that included Everett Dirksen, John Heinz, and Edward Brooke, just to mention a few.

I sense a longing for their fathers’s Oldsmobiles among leading members of the professional commentariat, especially the two Davids (Brooks and Broder).

Broder, indeed, has given a name to an condition: High Broderism, a syndrome which includes the willingness to sacrifice moral outcomes on the altar of the appearance of conciliation. As the Booman points out, High Broderism postulates that compromise is a one-way street: Democrats give; Republicans take.

Nothing I have read recently so illustrates how delusional is their faith in the existence of their fathers’ Oldsmobiles than Shaun Mullen’s remembrance of Russell W. Peterson, Republican Governor of Delaware from 1969 to 1973. Shaun’s conclusion:

Russ Peterson was 94 when he died on Monday night at his Wilmington home. It is sadly ironic that as a moderate Republican he would have stood no chance of being nominated today in a state where Christine O’Donnell was the party’s 2010 standard bearer, let alone become an environmental torchbearer for a party that eschews moderation and is an avowed enemy of the environment.

Several years ago, before it became a real prospect, I heard someone propose, “General Motors should just stop making Oldsmobiles and see whether anyone notices.” (Eventually, General Motors did and car buyers didn’t, but that’s another story.)

The Republican Party no longer makes Oldsmobiles and lots of folks still haven’t noticed.