I’m certainly no political prognosticator, but a couple of matters caught my eye over the past week or so that indicate to me that the Republican Party has become dangerously concerned with maintaining power rather than providing leadership.
The first thing that caught my attention was the political wrangling that occurred in regard to the silly GOP initiative to ban Internet gambling, a ban that leads to absurd abuses of power such as this. Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist was criticized last month for attempting to attach the Internet gambling ban on to a defense appropriations bill, so what does he do? Senator Frist attaches the Internet gambling ban to a port security bill at the last minute to ensure that there would be no debate over the ban and also to make sure that anyone who voted against the port security bill because of such shenanigans would be labeled as being soft on port security. In short, Frist crammed a needless and paternalistic law down our throats while stifling debate on the measure and not allowing for an honest and straightforward vote on the ban.
Elsewhere, over in the scandal sheets, it was bad enough that Florida Republican House member Mark Foley liked to send salacious emails to 16-year old House pages, now it appears that House Republican leadership hoped Foleyís indiscretions could be covered up until after the upcoming election. John Miller at The Corner sums the lurid affair up pretty well:

Foley could become the new Jack Abramoff. Except that whereas the details of Abramoffís were always a bit complicated for the public to follow closely, the accusations now leveled at Foley are much simpler and more appalling. Foley is on the verge of becoming the poster child of a party that is concerned about little more than preserving its power.

By the way, Foley championed child predator laws as a representative, so there is at least a reasonable chance that he will be prosecuted under the same law that he sponsored. Meanwhile, the NY Times’ John Tierney also chimes in ($) on the affair with a sound understanding of the economics of political power:

The justification for the page program is that it gives teenagers an insiderís glimpse of how Congress works. But why disillusion them at such a tender age? If they stayed in school, they could maintain their innocence by reading the old step-by-step textbook version of how a bill becomes law. By going to Capitol Hill, they see how the process has changed:
1. A bill is introduced to build highways.
2. A congressman receives a donation from a constituent who wants to open a go-kart track.
3. The congressman persuades his committee chairman to slip in a $350 million ìearmarkî for an ìalternative sustainable transportation research facilityî in his district.
4. The chairman quietly adds similar earmarks for all members of the committee.
5. The bill is passed unanimously.
6. The president complains about the ìwasteful spendingî but signs it into law anyway.
7. The congressman attends a fund-raiser at the new go-kart track.
What lesson has the page learned? That Congress is the closest thing in modern America to a medieval court: an enclave governed by arcane ancient rules of seniority, a gathering of nobles who spend their days accepting praise and dispensing favors to supplicants.
Theyíre so secure in their jobs, and so used to being surrounded by groveling minions, that they assume the privileges of feudal lords when dealing with pages and other lieges. Which is why, on occasion, they try to exercise the droit du seigneur.

And the foregoing doesn’t even include the Bush Administration’s failure to put a stop to the Justice Department’s policy of criminalizing unpopular business interests during the post-Enron era, an unsupervised regulatory scheme that has cost U.S. communities billions of dollars in losses and tens of thousands of jobs. Not to mention that badly-needed health care finance reform has been largely ignored, nothing has been done about income tax simplification, wasteful farm subsidies have been increased, inefficient tariffs have been placed on various products (including steel, lumber, and even shrimp), a massive new prescription drug governmental subsidy has been created, poorly-conceived amendments to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code were touted and then enacted, and airline security was nationalized into a huge and ineffectual bureaucracy.
Frankly, the most troubling thing about all this is that the Democratic Party is so unfocused that they are not routing these guys.