William F. Buckley, ancient founder of the National Review and leading light of the once powerful country-club wing of the GOP, is worried that Pres. Bush is destroying the Republican Party:

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue.

Buckley sees the fatal issue as Bush’s war in Iraq and fears that while the president’s aggressive campaign to win short-term political victories at home — like vetoing his own “emergency supplemental” war funding bill — may bolster his hardcore, mostly Christian nationalist base, it is all just a misdirection meant to hide the fact that Bush and his team know that the war is lost:

[Beyond] affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month.

Buckley compares the Iraqi insurgency to the spread of early Christianity, casting America in the role of the faltering Roman Empire:

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that [Vice Pres.] Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease?

He even suggests the insurgents’ cause is as unstoppable as your typical country clubbing freeman’s need for drink:

The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

Finally:

There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

Buckley ignores the source of his party’s affliction. Bush would have never reelected without the votes of the Christian nationalists, especially the ones in Ohio who turned out in droves to vote for Karl Rove’s anti-gay marriage amendment. These same easily fooled voters are largely still behind Bush and his lost cause.