“The Zombie Party” of India
Via Sulllivan, comes this article by Jonathan Rauch describing the Republican party as the zombie party.
Conservatives in the 2000s seemed bereft of answers to newer challenges–climate change, health care, non-state enemies–and often appeared uncomfortable discussing them.
We know what happens when movements or parties continue to stagger forward after running out of ideas: They become zombies. Zombie parties are a recurrent feature of electoral democracies. Unable to articulate any coherent or workable governing philosophy, they mindlessly jab at cultural hot buttons, mechanically repeat hardwired tropes (”cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes”), nurse tribal resentments, ostracize independent thinkers. Above all, they feel positively proud of their doggedness.
[…] To get a new brain, zombie parties usually need to spend years out of power or wait until a new generation rises to leadership.
[…] There are smart, modern people in the Republican Party and the conservative movement. But the movement is in no mood to listen to them.
This is exactly what happened to BJP after the election loss of 2004. It quelled the fiscal conservative voices and increased the social conservative ones. They have still not come to terms with that loss, and even more Hindutva seems to be the only mantra they have. Unfortunately, the next generation does not instill hope in me. Unlike Vajpayee and Advani and Mahajan, the new folks are prominent in the party not because of what they did or what they stand for, but because of who (rather, whose children) they are.
I hope for the sake of having a credible, national opposition to Congress, BJP does not sink.
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