Peggy Noonan has a powerful essay in the Wall Street Journal on how Republican politicos in DC lost their way in the years of the Bush Presidency:

  Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.
  And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.
  . . .
  What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration -- over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government -- has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.
  Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.