Thomas Schaller examines the disarray (and lack of distinction) of the Republican candidates and finds that prospective voters are unenthusiastic. If you need proof, look at the money they can't seem to raise.
The field is so feeble, and the prospects for 2008 so cloudy, that the Republican candidates, individually and collectively, face an atypically Republican problem: They don't have very much money. ...
The GOP's presidential aspirants seem a bit unsure of themselves, of their president, and of their party's moral authority and political standing. One of these candidates will emerge as the GOP standard bearer for 2008, of course. But in a party with no natural heirs, it's the value of the inheritance that's in doubt. Although 15 months still remain until the election, the Republican nomination looks less and less like a golden ticket to the Oval Office than an invitation to become their party's Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis -- a punch-line proxy for an era when the GOP lost its moorings.
Also in Salon today is Andrew O'Hehir's review of "No End in Sight." When Schaller writes of the GOP having lost its moorings, it's clear that the most salient reasons will be found in the subject of that film about the Iraq disaster in which "all the crucial policy decisions affecting Iraq's future, the entire Middle East and by extension the world were made by a tiny, closeted group of ideologues with no expertise in the country, the region, Arab culture, military affairs or much of anything else."
