W

In less than two months, the candidates for 2008 should be chosen.

Georgia makes its choice along most of the rest of the country, on February 5.

So let me tell you what I have been seeing, on the ground, here in Atlanta.

I have seen a few Obama signs, a few Hillary signs, a few Edwards signs. In that order. Very few.

I have seen a very few Ron Paul signs. On traffic poles. In yards. More Paul signs than Edwards signs, fewer Paul signs than Obama or Hillary signs.

I have seenKerry-Edwards bumper stickers, on cars of people who choose to recent history. I last observed this phenomenon after the 1984 election. Mondale-Ferraro stickers lived until they faded and peeled off by themselves.

I have also seen W stickers. Mainly W04 stickers like the one above. On car windows and bumpers.

I often look inside cars when I see these stickers, to find out what kind of moron would carry such a sticker, in December 2007. They’re white. They’re male or female, usually male. They’re usually middle-aged, but I’ve seen several on cars driven by younger drivers — pick-up trucks. Men only in those.

When I see the squarish W stickers, the white-on-black jobs, I look closely. Half the time these turn out to be copycat, anti-W stickers. W for Worst stickers. But half the time they’re the real deal.

This tells me something important.

The Republican grassroots have not abandoned the President. They support the President. And they fear the future.

They have a reason to fear the future, because all the Republican
candidates, in one way or another, put one element of the Republican
coalition in a primary position and relegate the others to secondary
status.

• Giuliani puts the neocons first, the Wall Street crowd second, the religious right third.
• Romney puts the Wall Street crowd first, the neocons second, and the religions right third.
• Huckabee puts the religious right first, the neocons second, and the Wall Street crowd third.
• McCain puts the neocons first, and everyone else second.
• Thompson puts the neocons and Wall Street crowd first, and pretends to support the religious right.
• Tancredo and Hunter are single-issue candidates,
  the first anti-immigration, the second a  pretend-Reagan neocon. Neither cares
  about either the Wall Street agenda nor the religious right.
• Paul puts an idealized view of the Wall Street crowd
  first, the religious right second, and dismisses the neocons entirely.
  He is the last Randian, as in Ayn Rand. This makes him dangerous.

Some important points about all this:

1. No one puts all three legs of the triad on an equal footing, as W does.
2. These are serious issue differences, which would result in serious policy differences, should any of these folks be elected.
3. Paul is dangerous because he is the only candidate who explicitly
   dismisses a basic element of the coalition, the neocons, from the
   party’s future.

Republicans, I think, don’t want any of this. They want W. They want
all three legs of the triad to be equal and working in tandem.

The fact they can’t have this depresses them It makes them angry and it makes them scared.

It’s this fear that distinguishes Republicans today.

Democrats, by contrast, are relatively apathetic. The policy
differences among Clinton, Obama, Edwards and (insert name here) are
relatively minor, just slight changes in emphasis, slight differences
in presentation, slight differences in approach. They’re biographical
differences, they’re process differences, they’re differences in
personality. They’re important but they’re not crucial. The vast
majority of Democrats will be happy to support whomever the party
nominates. Yes, even Dennis Kucinich. (Not that it’s going to happen.)

Republicans aren’t like that. Republicans want their W back. They can’t
get their W back. So what I see on the streets of Atlanta (and its
suburbs) is what I can only characterize as a grieving process. The old
age is ending, and Republicans don’t know what will follow — they just
know they’re not going to like it, not one little bit. So they hold on
to today and yesterday with both hands, in a state of denial. Some
activists have moved on to bargaining, but most just have not.

They know history is about to bury them.

They’re right.