The Great Republican Rebranding

WP

Sen. Rick Santorum wanted to talk.

His purpose, he said over breakfast earlier this week in the Senate dining room, was to "tell the other side of the story" about his record, which his foes use to cast him as -- these are his words -- "a mean-spirited, hard-right country club Republican."...

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Santorum is not alone. All over the country, Republicans are engaged in a massive effort at rebranding, reframing and, in some cases, wholesale retreat from past positions. The surest sign that the nation is in the middle of an ideological transition is that Republicans don't want to sound like -- well, Republicans....

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"All politics is reaction," Randall Rothenberg wrote in his 1984 book, "The Neoliberals." Rothenberg was describing the response of Democrats traumatized by the rise of Reagan-style conservatism. Back then, it was Democrats struggling to reinvent themselves as entrepreneur-friendly folks (anybody remember those "Atari Democrats"?) moving beyond "the solutions of the 1930s."

The current reaction is not simply to President Bush's low poll numbers. It's also a response to the failure of conservative policies and to the declining appeal of conservative rhetoric. Conservatives are trying to save themselves by offering progressive-sounding criticisms of the status quo, much as liberals offered ersatz conservative critiques two decades ago.

If Rick Santorum wants you to look at his record in a way that makes him a paladin for the poor and if Dennis Hastert wants you to know that he's suspicious of the oil companies, the political weather is changing. When one side starts making the other side's argument, you don't need to be a pollster to know which belief system is in the ascendancy.