If this country is divide, as the Nov 2004 election showed, 51-49 and the split is merely between Repbs and the Moveon.org crowd we are in VERY serious trouble. There are a lot of adult Dems. Same way their are a lot of adult Conservative who do not buy into some of the Tin Foil Hat rants posted here. Same way Freepers are but are but an activist segment of a larger movement, so too are the Leftist Bloggers, Activists and Pundits that do so much to color everyone perception of the Dems.
If we work from the Hegel theory of Theisis/Antithesis/Synthesis, it would appear the Center Right of the Dems and the Center Left of the Repbs will eventually join as a majority party with the far left and far right lopped off into splitter factions. Bush and Sen McMedia (McCain) may be the outriders of that trend.
I would rather not see that happen since I firmly believe in the Antithesis (Conservative) vision of maximum freedom possible for the maximum number of people with the minimum of Govt. The Synthesis of the two parties would be a sort stagnate, aggressively secular Govt neo-Socialist nanny state. It would combine all the worst elements of both current parties. It would not be a system I would care to live under.
It the Thesis (Dems) collapse, there will be nothing to keep the Conservative Antithesis from fracturing. I think part of the problem we see right now is the Conservatives, having no serious foes to fight, are turning on each other. The centrifugal force of opposing the Dems(thesis) is weakened so much that the anti-theisis is now on the verge of fracturing. That will not happen RIGHT now but it will happen unless the Dems can get back to being a serious political threat in an election cycle or two. Power corrupts, even when those in power are people doing things I like.
Very well thought out. I think the democrats still have a lot of power though, even though they're a minority. THere are only so many more seats they can lose. I think the biggest problem the GOP has is their acceptance of so many RINOs that do NOT really support the Republican plank. I am hoping that in the next few years, the Republicans in the House and Senate add a few more REAL solid conservatives to both, and shed their RINOs. I never have been too crazy about the idea that the GOP is a "big tent" where you can disagree on nearly everything, and still be a Republican. I don't want to be nasty to them like democrats are to their dwindling conservative numbers. But what good is it to have values like the conservative movement does, if we check them at the door so we can be accepting of people who don't share the same values, but want to be Republicans. I think many of the RINOs are democrats at heart, but they run as Republicans so that the Republican majority, mainly in the Senate, is a false majority. Really, if you get down to it, the Republican Majority is really only 50 votes at best, with 5 RINOs, 44 democrats, and 1 jeffordcrat. I would love it if specter, collins, chaffee, and snowe were replaced with REAL conservatives, but those states just aren't there. WA and New England isn't on the same page as the majority of the country, the part living in the real world.