Is the Republican Party Committing Suicide?

The Opinionator

Blake Dvorak of Real Clear Politics flags a comment from George Will on this past weekend’s edition of “This Week With George Stephanopoulos”:

[I]t took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, “Are you going to vote for Nixon in ‘60?” “No, I don’t like Hoover.” The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression, forfeiting the Republican advantage they’ve had since the ‘68 convention of the Democratic Party and the nomination of [George] McGovern. The advantage Republicans have had on national security matters may be forfeited.

You can watch the clip on YouTube. Will’s remark comes near the end. William F. Buckley signaled agreement with Will in his most recent column, writing, “There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.”

Disregard for the Constitution: It’s not just for the executive branch anymore. “In many respects, Guantanamo is still a legal black hole. Blame for that state of affairs lies not just with the administration but with Congress,” observes an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. “It was Congress that voted last year to deny detainees the right to challenge their confinement in court by applying for the ancient writ of habeas corpus. And it is Congress — even under Democratic control — that has failed to pass bipartisan legislation to restore habeas protection.”

Novelist and short-story writer Stephen Elliott spent a month without the Internet. He writes about his experience at Poets & Writers:

My first week offline was mostly spent in a state of withdrawal. I suffered from bouts of extreme boredom. I realized I hadn’t been bored in years because I’d gotten in the habit of never giving myself the chance.

But slowly I began to find other activities to fill my time. During weeks two and three, I watched the first three seasons of The Wire (something I might have done anyway). I subscribed to the New York Times and spent almost two hours every morning reading it from cover to cover. It was only in the fourth week that things started coming together. I wasn’t just breaking the Internet habit, I was breaking the habits I had learned on the Internet: that addiction to continual bursts of small information.

I started reading a lot more books, which is good for me since I’m a person who writes books. And I read more challenging books. I would read and write all morning, take a lunch break, and then write until evening. I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out.