Great article by Bruce Bartlett in the American Conservative about how the GOP lost its mind and, consequently, elections. But I think he misses a connection.
At one point, Bartlett says this about Obama (which I agree with 100%):
The final line for me to cross in complete alienation from the right was my recognition that Obama is not a leftist. In fact, he’s barely a liberal—and only because the political spectrum has moved so far to the right that moderate Republicans from the past are now considered hardcore leftists by right-wing standards today. Viewed in historical context, I see Obama as actually being on the center-right.
And then, later on, he also says this:
It is now widely understood that the nation may be center-left after all, not center-right as conservatives thought.
This is probably true too, but the point that I think Bartlett should have made more explicit is that the problem is not that Republicans misjudged where the American people are on the political spectrum, so much as where the political spectrum is in the first place. Even if America is a center-right country as Republicans love to say, the center-right is where Obama and the Democrats are, not where the Republicans are. Even by their own assessment of the electorate, their political positioning is terrible – and it only makes sense if you define “center-right” as somewhere to the right of Dick Cheney.
So the good news is that between the GOP’s extremism and America’s demographic trends (which Bartlett also talks about), the Republicans may be dooming themselves to irrelevance for a long time to come. Of course, the bad news is that most Democrats might as well be Republicans too.
I think He might be making a point about conservatives who call themselves Christians, but it’s very subtle…
Seriously, this has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time: How can anyone wear their “Christianity” on their sleeve while simultaneously rejecting the message of the Testament which puts the “Christ” in Christianity?
Come to think of it, I think they’re pretty much all interiors…
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I actually did manage to find things I hadn’t shot before in the four years I was there…
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This is the last of the NYC photos for probably a while. Up next is, um, high school.
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Pretty much exactly what it says. Only one more batch of NYC photos after this.
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So yeah, the Democrats had a pretty good election on Tuesday: Electoral vote landslide for Obama, wins for progressives like Liz Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown and Alan Grayson, and losses for misogynistic Tea Party buffoons like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Allen West and Joe Walsh. Better yet, as the minority and youth votes grow, it looks like these kinds of results could be the new normal.
But.
Isolated pockets of progressivism notwithstanding, today’s Democrats as a whole are still just as corporate-owned as the Republicans, they’re just subtle enough to frame their sellouts as “pragmatism” and “compromise”. Worse yet, it looks like Obama and the Democrats are poised to Grandly Bargain awaySocial Security and Medicare, the crown jewels of the liberals and progressives who just swept them back into office. So you’ll forgive me if I’m less than excited about Democrats retaining control of the White House and Senate when they’re committed to delivering Republican policy outcomes.
Demographics make the GOP irrelevant, Democrats make it unnecessary.
It’s not enough to vote based on whether Obama has done a crappy job over the last four years (he has). Vote based on who you think will do a better job over the next four years, and on whether you think they’re a lesser enough evil to be worth supporting.
