To close out the year (and to give you folks something to read while I finish up scripts), tMR is listing the "Top 20 Trends of 2007". But I need your help putting them in order. Starting Friday, you'll be able to vote for the trend you think is the most important. Somehow, there'll be a prize involved. I've got to figure it out. If you have a suggestion for a trend, email me.
2007: Republicans Go DownIt was just a few short years ago that Karl Rove & Co. were declaring that you could count on the Republicans to run the country for the next 40 years. How did it all go so wrong? Well, there's the sex scandals, the corruption charges, the incompetence, which certainly doesn't help, but there's a deeper current at work-- and one the Dem's ought to take notice of. The Republican rush to the right was by all accounts brilliant strategy-- combine moral conservatism to please the base with fiscal policy that favored big business and you get a party that translates into both votes and cash. Unfortunately consistent ideology was thrown out with the bathwater and Republicans found themselves becoming the very thing they accused the Dems of being; an issue party -- arguing that marriage was too important an issue to be left to the states, while howling that abortion could only be handled on a state-by-state basis.
For liberals, the parade of scandal and downfall of the G.O.P is cause to party like it's 1999 (when Bill was still in the White House), but they ought not to send out invitations to their pan sexual loft parties just yet. Less than 4 years ago, the Dem's future looked just as bleak and look what's happened. The calls of 'inevitability' are myopic ones. Just because your opponent's house is on fire doesn't change the fact that you're still living in a pile of rubble yourself. Voters aren't voting for Dems because of anything they've done; they're voting because they're dissatisfied with the status quo.
Both parties are in the process of reinventing themselves and the rapid shift of loyalties is more a sign of instability than in one party triumphing over another. While both sides have done a great job of securing their bases (watching the G.O.P. Presidential candidates trip over themselves to show which one is the most socially conservative is as painful as the Dem's quibbling over who was for what, when), but in America today, if you're not a partisan, you're probably disgusted.
Why should Dem's care? After all, they're getting the White House in 2009, right? Well, for one-- all those people who voted for Bush twice haven't suddenly become flower-wearing hippies. They're pissed off and disaffected and they're not going away. The candidate who takes the DNC nomination can either be a lightning rod for their collective frustration (rhymes with "Dillary Plinton") or can lead help the country move beyond the cul-de-sac of "red vs. blue".
No President operates in a vacuum and the one who is "most qualified to lead" in 2009 is the one who will be able to bring both sides to the table to forge a new kind of American politics. Both parties are in a unique position to reinvent themselves for the 21st Century; you see it in the popularity of Obama and Ron Paul, politicians with policies and positions that would not have had a platform eight years ago. It's impossible to predict the future of American party politics right now, but the Republican party is going to be a part of it. Whether it becomes the minority party of social conservatism or returns to a more ideological consistent centrist party is anyone's guess, but if Dem's need proof that you can't kill your opponent and dismiss them as inconsequential, they just need to look to their own recent history.
The G.O.P. is dead. Long live the G.O.P.
Labels: 2007, politics
