The Submerging Republican Majority

That's the title of James Traub's foolish op-ed in today's NY Times. Let's take a look at his most ridiculous claims:

President Bush is now more unpopular than Bill Clinton was at any time in his tenure, while public approval of the GOP-dominated Congress has plummeted to 23 percent, a level last seen in October 1994, the month before the Democrats suffered one of the most humiliating wipeouts in the history of Congressional elections. Many political analysts now say that the Democrats have a real shot at retaking the House of Representatives and an outside chance of winning the Senate too.

"The polls" say one thing but Democrats' actions tell the story. John Kerry read the polls and saw modest support for the Iraq war. Emboldened by these 'facts', he wrote a nonbinding resolution calling for the removal of all American troops by year's end. Democrats huffed and puffed about Republicans playing politics with the war, a specious argument if ever there was one. After their huffing and puffing, they moved to limit debate on the resolution so they wouldn't have to make speeches that would go on the record. Shortly thereafter, they voted, with Kerry, Kennedy, Harkin, Boxer and two other moonbats voting for the immediate withdrawal.

Let's not forget that "the polls" showed Mondale leading Reagan in every issue other than the economy and national security the night before Mondale won Minnesota and DC.

In short, the Democrats' senators told the story on how the country really feels about the Iraq war.

As for "many political analysts now say that the Democrats have a real shot at retaking the House of Representatives and an outside chance of winning the Senate", get serious. Which political analysts? From which party? What evidence are they basing their opinions on?

If you think that's bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. Check this out:

So why doesn't 2006 recall the GOP's glory years? First of all, McKinley was facing a particularly hapless generation of Democrats. A long period of deadlock had come to an end in the off-year election of 1894, when the failure of the incumbent Democrats to stem a financial panic led to a colossal electoral rout. In a shambles, the party took a decisive turn to the left in 1896 by choosing the populist Bryan, who ran again in 1900 and 1908. Today's Democrats are much closer to the mainstream , and the realignment has been correspondingly shallower.

This is the most incoherent and unpersuasive paragraphs I've ever read, which is saying something because I've read Murtha op-eds, Eleanor Clift columns and Paul Krugman's diatribes. While the margins for victory are close, the difference on the issues couldn't be more stark.

Why doesn't this idiot think that the current Democratic Party is "in a shambles" and that "the party took a decisive turn to the left" just like "in 1896"? What makes him think that this generation of liberals isn't at least as hapless as the Democrats of McKinley's time? What part of Moonbatville does this guy live in? What makes him assert that "today's Democrats are much closer to the mainstream"? Has he taken a look at Sens. Kennedy, Harkin, Boxer, Reid, Durbin and Kerry lately? Or Reps. Murtha, Pelosi, Conyers, McDermott, McKinney, Tubbs-Jones, just to name a few? How can these Democrats be considered within lightyears of mainstream political thinking? The simple answer is they can't. Only a moonbat like Katrina van den Heuvel would think that those idiots are mainstream. Remember that Ms. van den Heuvel thinks anyone even slightly to the right of Ted Kennedy is an archconservative.

The war in Iraq is the biggest, but not the only, reason for the growing crisis. It is instructive that only one-third of mainline Protestants now say they approve of President Bush's performance (as opposed to one-half two years ago), according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. A Congress that spends days arguing over the body of Terry Schiavo or the merits of a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage does not feel like the embodiment of the future to more moderate or more secular Republicans. Rove and Bush have driven an already conservative party to the right.

This paragraph is the final piece of evidence I'll give you that this guy is an idiot. There isn't a movement conservative who thinks that "Rove and Bush have driven an already conservative party" farther "to the right." In fact, they think, rightly, that Bush is a moderate compared with Mssrs. Gingrich and Reagan.

The final paragraph offers the mnotivation why this idiot wrote this article:

John McCain could reinvigorate the party should he succeed Bush, just as the equally magnetic Teddy Roosevelt did when he took office following McKinley's assassination in 1901. But even if that happens, McCain's party is likely to be very different from George W. Bush's.

He's begging Republicans to nominate someone as moderate as McCain. Frankly, there aren't more than a handful of conservatives that'd vote for McCain because (a) he's an opponent of the First Amendment; (b) he's betrayed the President on judges; and (c) he's worked far more often with Ted Kennedy than with conservatives on the most important issues of the day.

Walter Dean Burnham, the political scientist, defined political realignments as America's "surrogate for revolution." It may be that Karl Rove's revolution was one Americans did not want and have now begun to reject.

Or it might be that Karl Rove's revolution will long outlast the memory of this idiot. By the way, how can there be a political realignment happen in a democracy without the consent of the people?

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Posted Sunday, June 18, 2006 12:09 PM

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