Posted on 11/08/2004 10:55:59 PM PST by Former Military Chick
It happens after every political defeat: an agonizing reassessment. Correction: It should happen after every political defeat. It doesn't, not always. That is why the Whig Party isn't around anymore, unfortunately. (Some of us still miss the party of Henry Clay and young Abe Lincoln.)
But the Whigs just wouldn't learn. Confronted by the most existential of choices — Unite or Die — the Whig Party chose to die. Torn apart by its sectional divisions, a party that might have saved the Union couldn't even save itself. It dissolved into factions, including upstart Free-Soilers and Republicans. And now the Whigs excite the interest only of historians. Because they refused to adapt to the times. That way lies extinction.
After Tuesday's election, the Democratic Party could stand some reassessing, too, while it's still around. What other choice has it got?
Well, the Democrats could just sit back and wait for disaster to strike the country and the Republicans. The Dems could hope Americans would then turn to them as the only alternative in a two-party system, the way the country did after the Crash.
But I wouldn't advise being bearish on America. It's never a wise course in the long run, and seldom in the short run, either.
Or the Democratic Party could hunker down in those safe blue states and accept its fate as a permanent geographical and ideological minority, much as the GOP did during the '30s and '40s. But that's a long time between presidencies: two decades.
It took a popular general to revive the Republican Party in 1952. Nobody was quite sure what Dwight Eisenhower stood for, but he had an irresistible smile and moderate mien.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
As Rush would surely say: "They are the funniest when they lose."
Firing Squad?
No matter how they try to spin it, the party with the message -- "we want to take all of your money and control your lives" -- isn't going to be around much longer (thanks be to God).
Meaning they're almost certainly not going to follow it.
The Dems will rise again, the only true question is how long it will be and what they will look like when they do. The only point that I'm trying to make is that the disintegration of either major party is virtually impossible in the modern era.
The Republican Party hit a dreadful low of 16 Senate seats and 88 House seats in 1937 (can you imagine?) and it survived.
Canada! Buh Bye!
The Democratic Party is a criminal enterprise. How can anyone be talking about these Bolshevik thugs going away when they can continue to exist by inventing double the number of votes they actually get each election. 105 percent turnout in every slum. Yeah, sure...
If the GOP won't stand up to the shenanigans by the press and the Democrats (and they won't) they deserve to be overrun, and will be. The Crats ain't going anywhere.
Isn't it curious, what actually unifies the party, a desire, as you put it to,"take all your money and control your lives," cannot be openly run upon.
Their problem is that their underlying PHILOSOPHY is so unattractive that it erupts in a need to tax and control but it is really much more ambitious than the tax and control symptoms it generates.
They would be God and from this mortal anomaly comes all the harshness and incoherence of their politics.
More to the point: The Democrats survived being on the wrong side of th Civil War.
Paul Greenburg was good up until this point.
Apparently he missed John Kerry's biography.
He is ANYTHING but Mr. Inbetween. He's as left as they come (Sen. Kennedy is the conservative Senator from Massachusetts!). He, in fact, just tried to sell the country snake oil, and nearly succeeded. He's part of the crowd that makes the democRAT party what it is, RAT infested.
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