I honestly admire your optimism. I don’t share it, but that’s my natural tendency.
What we have here, is a race.
One side is the current regime; working assiduously to impoverish in the present tense and deplete in aspiration enough people so that a voting majority will beg the government for their salvation. On the other side are people who have never dreamed of asking the government for their viability. The finish line is November 2012. If the country as a whole goes the way of California it will be all over, signed, sealed and delivered. If not, the threat does not go away. Nor will the outlook be resolved unless the outcome is as you posit. I don’t underestimate the other side knowing very well how close they are. This is what they do: Push hard, back off, push again, back off. What I’m saying is that I don’t see the ‘10 election necessarily as a “trend”, only established with one data point. It could be the left’s signal that they have to shift their demolition into high gear. And frankly, the economy is in a state where it can be easily cratered. Especially if it’s to be wrecked on purpose.
Except for its people, the institutions of the US feel like a dying animal, utterly infected by corruption and cronyism in every sector, with every insider fighting for the last scraps of meat off the barely-alive but seriously wounded beast.
I claim no insight as to which side will win. Ordinarily, I would be in the “America always figures out a way to come back” camp, but maybe “this time it’s different”.
The bottom line, as far as I am concerned, is that the other side understands that there are enough people who can be made so miserable that they will beg the government for their very survival and will vote for those who promise to hand out that survival. It won’t matter how many promises have been proven to be lies at that point. Why would it; it’s already practically 100%! The folks in that position aren’t gonna be thinking about no Constitution thingy. They’ll want a story and the left will give them one, printed out on their food stamp booklets. We Conservatives may very well have won this last battle but I would suggest that the other side can muck things up lots more in the time they have remaining. And I absolutely believe this is their modus.
So, half full/half empty.
What I’m saying is that I don’t see the ‘10 election necessarily as a “trend”, only established with one data point.
If you're only looking at the Republican gains in the US House, then I can somewhat understand your pessimism. However, the Republican tsunami of 2010 was much, much deeper than that. State legislatures and governorships all over the country, as well as countless lower level state and county offices flipped to the Republicans.
What the Democrats did to the country between 2007 and 2010 provoked a stronger push back from the people than our elected governments have seen in nearly a century. Fully one month after that historic wipe out, the Democrats have shown that their socialist agenda holds more power over them than the clear will of the people.
This is only going to provoke the people to greater anger, which will predictably result in a second Republican tsunami in 2012. And despite the fact that in January 2011, the Republicans will hold the majority in the House, the people won't forget who caused all of the pain and wreckage over the last three years. Their newly erected laws will live on, after the losers are out of office.