The Nasty Party

Has the image of the Republican party finally jumped the shark? My take is here in the Sunday Times. Money quote:

Scandals come and go in politics. In second terms for presidents, they invariably happen. The last two two-term presidents had crippling scandals knock them sideways in their final years. Reagan had Iran-contra. Clinton had Lewinsky. They still managed to achieve things especially Reagan. But what's happening now in Washington feels both superficially less riveting and more damaging.

Think of it as a perfect storm of many, many scandals, meeting over the increasingly warm political water of the Iraq war and becoming something potentially more lethal. In many ways the entire future of American conservatism is at stake.

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