Prepare Yourself for Obama’s Second Term

By Michael Filozof:

Does anyone remember the landslide Republican victory in the House in 1994, breaking forty straight years of Democratic control — a massive rebuke of the Clinton administration?

And yet…Clinton got re-elected in 1996. He didn’t just squeak by, either — he won a crushing 379-159 victory in the Electoral College and beat the Republican ticket by eight and a half percent in the popular vote.

Conservatives were in shock. How could this happen? Answer: after the 1994 conservative revolution in the midterm elections, the Republican 1996 presidential campaign turned into the Revenge of the Flaming Moderates. The Republican primaries featured banal, milquetoast candidates like Lamar Alexander (whose campaign strategy was to don a flannel shirt and stand in front of a sign proclaiming, appropriately enough, “Lamar!”), Steve Forbes, Richard Lugar, and the doddering Washington insider Bob Dole. Pat Buchanan fought an insurgent battle against the GOP moderates, finishing second in the primaries just to keep it interesting, but he quit the party soon thereafter.

The 2012 crop of GOP candidates is no better; quite arguably, they are a good deal worse.

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This is why we need Sarah Palin to run.

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