George Will on the Marginalization of the Republican Party

In his wry farewell to Bush 43, arch-Republican/Conservative George Will has this to say about the increasingly marginal Republican Party. The Republican Party is more and more isolated in the Confederate South.


"Actually, however, the contraction and self-marginalization of the Republican Party began before Bush entered office. In 2000, he became the first Republican to win the presidency while losing the North. In 2004, when he won re-election by winning Ohio, that was the only large state he carried outside the South. That year Bush became the first president since his father in 1988 to win more than 50 percent of the vote. This was a costly achievement, attained by embracing a sterile template of politics: Get your base riled up—it does not much matter about what—and hope that your base is a bit larger and angrier than the other party's, and that swing voters are a small slice of the turnout."