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To: Torie
Try again:

Far too much emphasis and weight has been put on the recall election, as some harbinger of a realignment. There was a slow and steady realignment from about 1977 on, that slowly made the GOP into a parity party from a minority party. There was no seismic event, Reagan to the contrary notwithstanding, although Reagan was a factor. The Burnham hypothesis based on about 4 data points (an absurdly small statistical sample), on realigning elections as some political harbinger, that occurred about every 30 to 40 years or so, really did not pan out.

In any event, the whole schematic is dated. The alignments are driven these days by style and what superficial cultural issues are in play, and just how the somewhat economically pressed Anglo lower middle class vote goes, which is cross conflicted by a host of issues. The idea that there will be a stable majority party holding sway is profoundly silly. It is unlikely to happen, particularly since with modern communications and focus groups and pollings, the parties, and more to the point, political entreprenuers, can tack with considerably more accuracy and with boatloads of more money for the media, towards trying to garner the vital swing voters.

Thus I suspects public squares like FR will be endlessly fascinating until sometime after I depart this

8 posted on 10/17/2003 9:34:49 PM PDT by Torie
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To: Torie
The idea that there will be a stable majority party holding sway is profoundly silly. It is unlikely to happen, particularly since with modern communications and focus groups and pollings, the parties, and more to the point, political entreprenuers, can tack with considerably more accuracy and with boatloads of more money for the media, towards trying to garner the vital swing voters.

Disagree. Your analysis overlooks the fact that the political parties, and their candidates, must service their core constituencies, and must meet their approval in primary elections to become candidates in the first place.

Because of the relentless pressure exerted by a dominantly leftist intelligencia and media over several decades, the Republican Party has been forced to marginalize or exclude extremists, whereas extremists have been allowed to thrive in the Democratic because of cover provided by these same socially influential elements.

Since the margin between the two parties is decided by their appeal to moderates and independents, and since moderates and independents are hostile to political extremists (of either ideological wing) this puts Republicans at an advantage over Democrats. The GOP has become the majority party, and there is every prospect that it will remain so until the extreme left is expelled from their position of substantial control and influence within the Democratic Party.

40 posted on 10/17/2003 10:28:37 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: Torie
Re: Far too much emphasis and weight has been put on the recall election, as some harbinger of a realignment.

Agreed. About all it says is that GWB is attracting good talent to the party.

90 posted on 10/19/2003 4:12:40 AM PDT by ChadGore (Kakkate Koi!)
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