Weekly Standard’s search for the Republican Comeback
The Weekly Standard on the stands right now, and tucked one week back on the website, presents itself with the magazine’s quest to discover the start of the Republican Party Comeback. We start with the Fred Barnes tedium hack-work of the week, but I don’t recommend reading it because it is the Fred Barnes tedium hack-work of the week. Obama is in trouble. Or soon will be. He can read the political tea-leaves. Will this to happen, and sooner or later — it will happen. Or so seems to think Fred Barnes on a weekly standard.
More pertinent, this article poses the question:Â A GOP Comeback — Will it start with New Jersey’s Chris Christie?
I don’t know. That’s months away. Why ask that question when you can ask the question about the New York Congressional District’s special election? Will the AIG Scandal bring the Republican to victory in this longtime Republican district, vacated by a Democrat made into a Senator, carried narrowly by Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008? Wouldn’t it be the “start” of a “Republican Comeback” if the GOP wins this seat — in an hour as I type this? Isn’t that the implication of the article? And if the answer to that question is “yes”, doesn’t that conflict with the other article about the GOP Comeback?
The answer to the question of whether the AIG Scandal will bring the Republican to victory appears to be “no”. The answer to the question of whether a Republican victory there presents itself as a sign of anything is, really, no. The answer to the question about New Jersey is something along the line of — it’s a Democratic state with a corrupt political culture that suggests a Republican victory sometime — yet, that’s been the feeling for the past half a dozen political cycles and yet — . So… no, in any case.
But I guess these are the questions that animate a partisan political magazine during its out years.