Posted on 12/30/2003 9:57:48 PM PST by Pokey78
Entering 2004, it appears that America is poised to have a defining election that will create a permanent Republican majority.
Democrats appear likely to nominate Howard Dean, rather than someone like Dick Gephardt or Joe Lieberman or Wesley Clark who could present a stronger challenge to President Bush in the general election. In doing so, Democrats are also setting the direction that they want their party to follow -- the extreme left.
Dean has stated again and again that his first objective is to take over the Democratic Party and return it to its roots. In doing so, he will part ways from Democrats such as Bill Clinton and Lieberman, who felt that Democrats need to veer to the center in elections and then govern from the left.
Like another presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, Dean's first objective is his party's machinery. But unlike Goldwater, Dean is wrong on what the American people want.
From the 1952 election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Americans have been turning more conservative. Goldwater's ideas were right on target with millions of Americans, but he was shot down by his own misstatements and by liberals in his own party who thought imitating Democrats was the way to victory. The subsequent elections of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush demonstrate the resonance of Goldwater's ideas.
Dean's ideas, on the other hand, are not popular with a majority of the American voters or even a majority of Democrats. But under the arcane nominating rules, Dean will most likely be the Democratic nominee. Sensing this, Al Gore recently rushed to endorse Dean. In doing so, Gore hoped to imitate Nixon. Nixon knew Goldwater would lose in 1964. But Nixon realized that Goldwater's overall philosophy was a winner, so he supported Goldwater wholeheartedly, hoping to inherit his support in 1968 and with that the presidency. Gore believes that the same will happen to him.
But Gore is miscalculating. The country is more conservative and grows more so daily. Gore and Dean are out of touch with a majority of Americans with their support for same-sex marriages. In foreign policy, they resemble Neville Chamberlain more so than Harry Truman. And by backing them, the Democrats are consigning themselves to minority status for the long term.
The 2004 presidential race will be a defining election in American politics, akin to that of Franklin Roosevelt's in 1936 that truly established the Democrats as a majority party.
Key groups that can make up a new Republican majority are forming. Jewish-Americans, long a stalwart of the Democrats, are ready to vote Republican over what they see as not only Dean's but the Democratic Party's abandonment of Israel. Hispanics have also shown, most recently in the California recall, that they will vote Republican.
Finally, Democrats are writing off an entire section of the country -- the South. The Dean nomination will be the final action needed to set off the Republican majority at all levels.
Dean is not a godsend to Republicans; he is the defining moment that Republicans have needed to become the majority party.
--David E. Johnson is the CEO of Strategic Vision LLC, an Atlanta-based public relations and public affairs company.
I think a healthy mainstream two-party system is actually a good thing for this country. It might not necessarily be better for the Republican Party, but I think it would be far better for America if the Democrats simply returned to the way that they used to be before the Communist Front more or less hijacked the party in the post-Kennedy era. Sadly, I'm not sure at this point that it is possible though; if Dean gets nominated it's a signal that the Democrats are dangerously close to the point of no return.
The struggle is over the day Dean wins the nomination.
On that day, the Democratic party will cease to exist as a national party and a threat to national security.
Its remaining constituency will consist of communists, sex perverts, morons, and trial lawyers.
Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse within 12 years of Reagans election.
I predict the collapse of the Democratic party within 8 years.
Make no mistake about it, the inmates are now running the asylum, and the Democratic party is out of control.
The Klintoonoids will try to prevent Dean from winning the nomination at ANY cost.
Its not surprising Dean is ahead among Democratic primary voters, if they had any brains they wouldn't be Democrats in the first place.
Either Gephardt (because of his soul connection with the union get-out-the-vote squads) or Lieberman (because of his relative moderation) would be stronger candidates than Dean, but I think Wesley Clark might be even weaker.
Wes has that Ross Perot kooky paranoia thing going on big time, with an extra helping of downright creepiness. He's also got those vacant, glassy eyes, custom made for the classic deer-in-the-headlights stare. When those peeper hit the kreig lights on debate night you've got the makings of a landslide.
I'm not that optimistic. If Dean is nominated and loses big, he still will not be out of the picture. He will still have his diehard supporters--the far left who view him as their savior.
Hill and Bill will try to move in and exert control over the party. If they can manage to wrest those far left adherents away from the Dean camp, they could cobble together a coalition that would again be viable. Their hope would be that there would be a conservative third party candidate who would siphon enough votes away from the mainstream GOP candidate so that the Clintons could win as they did in '92. i still think the Democrat Party is on the wane, but Bill/Hill could postpone its demise for a few more years.
There are enough disgruntled far right conservatives who think they've been betrayed by Bush to cause trouble, I think.
The key is to keep the GOP united in 2008 and beyond. That will be tough, but hopefully Bush/Rove will throw enough bones to the "real" conservatives to keep them on board. Some fiscal restraint, any at all, would really help. If the GOP remains united, I don't think they will lose.
If the Democrats continue in their decline, it will be interesting to watch where the blacks go. Will they stay glued to an out of power party that can do absolutely nothing for them? Will new black leaders rise up who are sympathetic to the GOP and can exert some influence there?
Lots of interesting stuff to watch in the coming years.
Excellent....
I got a WebTV in August 18 1997.
I cancelled my subscription to the AJC that same day.
Well said. The truth of the matter is that they are aided and abedded by the useful idoits of the press. How else would they be allowed to reposition themselves after their primaries. The thing here is that we are seeing there pre-primary action up front (thanks to the internet) which the press can't ignore as in the past.
Notice how Hillary is repostioning herself now. Besides going to Afganistan and Iraq, doing three interviews on a Sunday Morning (when as a good baptist, she should have been in Church watching Bill) and now gets on the news as if supporting the war wholeheartedly. The press is giving her the supreme pass, not focusing on her demagoging comments in the Senate against the war.
I think there is a conspiracy amoung the Dems. They are all deliberately running hard left knowing that they will install the repositioned wicked witch at their convention. She will be positioned as a moderate new democrat with a semi-palatable universal health care program (BARF).
But the American people are not giving the press the pass anymore having access to the Internet. So it will be the press who will lose with the democratic soreloosermen in 2004.
Brace yourself!
The election night story you will hear from all of the above will not be about the crushing defeat of the Dems by Bush. What story you will hear all night long is about Bush's lack of "coat-tails" and the fact that he is now a lame duck president.
This will be the story even if the Pubbies pick up a seat or two in the senate and 10-12 in the house.
Because the Dems have moved so far to the left and there is nowhere else for centrists to go to.
The other interesting thing will be if perhaps the GOP divides into the two major parties with perhaps the moderate Dems joining the libertarian and moderate Republicans as one party and the conservatives as the other. I suspect that the Dems would hang around, getting 10-15% of the Presidential vote, several dozen Reps and a Senator or two... Could be interesting, actually.
If it were just a question of politics, then I'd say that was quite likely. He was rather more centrist as a governor and will likely try to use that in the general election. But I think his thin skin and gift of gaffe will undo him, even if his politics don't.
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