Republicans On The Couch

Over at the National Review, David Frum takes a look at the weakness in the GOP field. I think his analysis is spot on. It's good enough that I hope no one in the GOP reads it. Some key quotes

Given that amazing roster — why does this campaign feel so feckless and lackluster?

Rudy Giuliani — a leader once legendary for his intensity, focus, and mastery of detail — has been running an improvised, unbriefed, unprepared campaign.

Mitt Romney has ignored and denigrated his two greatest political achievements — his health-care success and his trans-party victory in Massachusetts — in order utterly implausibly to position himself as a social-issues crusader.

John McCain, Mr. Bipartisan, now presents himself as a red-meat conservative.

Shall I go on?

But as much as I blame the candidates, I have to blame the party too. Have Republicans absorbed how much trouble their party is in? To the (limited) extent that we do, we tend to to attribute everything to Iraq — as if Katrina, the Schiavo affair, corruption in Congress, and the intensifying irrelevance of our domestic-policy agenda did not exist. And so we demand from our candidates ever more fervent declarations of fealty to an ideology that interests an ever dwindling proportion of the public.