Like many of you, I have been keenly interested in the demographic wave that threatens to consign the Republicans to minority status for a good long while assuming a half way competent administration (which I'm also pretty confident about). I had a conversation with an establishment DC type the other night, someone who has been deeply ensconced in the Hill, as well as journalistic and lobbying circles for a long time. He's a bright guy but a quintessential villager and swallower of the received wisdom, a Democrat who has always had a very limited view of what can be accomplished by progressives. He seemed unmoved by Obama's seven point win (given the circumstances) and asked if I thought it wasn't all that impressive given the mess the country is in and whether I was concerned about the transition. I replied that I wasn't in the least bit worried about the transition, that only the worst kind of nattering fools were, and that I thought this election was just the beginning of the wave that was going to engulf conservatism. I described it to him as a "pig in a python" -- the wave of voters under 30 and their younger siblings, today's teenagers, who are turned off by all things Republican -- that is going to begin passing through the body politic while the older, whiter demographic goes to the great Fox News Network in the sky.
My optimism has been further bouyed by stories like this describing the recent Gallup poll about the Republican Party. Two things jump out -- first the GOP is really unpopular with only 34% approving and 61% disapproving. I can't recall ever seeing anything quite like that in my lifetime. The second, and more significant point though, is that of the Republicans surveyed, 59% believe that the party needs to become more conservative (absent the mass donning of brown shirts, I am not sure how this is even possible) and only 12% believe that the Party needs to become more moderate.
This reflects the inability of the right wing echo chamber to engage in anything like meaningful self-criticism. It shows that the die hards are determined to provide more of the same, only more so -- without regard to what can be readily discerned about public opinion. In other words, these people have bought their own bullshit about "center-right" nation. The reality, of course, is that few hard right positions are popular with the public writ large, whether it be privatizing Social Security, criminalizing abortion, or abolishing the income tax. Their own guru, Karl Rove, understood this pretty well, hence his strategic moves with respect to immigration reform, Medicare Part D, and No Child Left Behind, all of which were designed to bring in additional votes to add to the base. A Republican Party that opts for a path of conservative purity is going to be increasingly ghettoized into the essentially non-dynamic parts of the country -- the deep South and Appalachia, along with the interior Plains and rural Mountain States.
So I urge our Republican brethren to go for it -- be pure and principled. Invent your own reality. On Palin, on Huckabee, on Mittens and Tancredo. Play to your base 24/7. In the meantime, President Obama is going to be cleaning up the mess you all have made and winning elections.
It's going to be a great time to be a liberal. . .
