Midnight in America: How Republicans lost their sense of optimism

For many members of the GOP, it's end-time for the greatest country on earth

Reagan
(Image credit: (Ralf-Finn Hestoft/CORBIS))

For the past couple of decades, any time two or more conservatives have gotten together they could count on Ronald Reagan's ghost showing up, too. The freshest-faced ideologue at the confab would admonish any dour conservatives that the Gipper was an optimist, that he declared it was Morning in America, that he won 49 states just by smiling. Leave the doom and gloom to the likes of Jimmy Carter with his malaise speech. People don't want to hear that.

But in the wake of the the economic downturn and the election of Barack Obama, conservative politicians keep going off script. They are starting to sound as mournful as conservative intellectuals. Maybe American life is ending, after all. Ben Franklin told us that the Founding Fathers had given us "a republic, if you can keep it" — well, perhaps we're losing it.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.