schadenfreude is still what's for dinner!
>>The Contract With America that brought the Republicans to power more than 10 years ago is a distant blur in the GOP's rearview mirror. Smaller, competent and restrained government has been sacrificed to the new coalition of Republican rent-seekers.
>>Republicans and conservatives aren't the same thing. ...To a principled conservative, it is bad news when the Democrats lurch to the left, even if it makes the Democrats less likely to win elections. Why? Because when the Democrats move left, so do the Republicans. In American politics, when one party moves left or right, the political center of gravity moves that way too.
--------- So...it's a matter of picking the lesser of two evils or the evil of the two lessers...the party that will hurt us less in the wallet. But does he have a point about Republicans leaning more to the left when Dems do the same?
It's too late for that.
There's a larger point that Goldberg is making. The only way for healthy ideas and policies to be developed within the political system is if both parties work to offer an intelligent, feasible outlook on the nation's path and future. This is done within the larger context of intense but loyal and patriotic competition.
The reason the Republican Congress and, to a lesser extent, the Bush Administration, have passed such mediocre legislation is because they've become intellectually lazy. They've been able to sink to that state because the Democrat Party has become such a joke.
It doesn't take serious thought to win a debate with a simpleton.
From Goldberg's column a week or so ago:
"It is amazing how obvious — OK, even trite — is the Democratic plight. Democrats need the money and energy of their "progressive," blog-addicted base, but in order to get it, they turn off mainstream voters. In other words, they can't get escape velocity.
"Clinton's Wal-Mart refund is a perfect illustration not merely of her hypocrisy but of the quicksand she is now in. She thinks it's a winning message to say she's too good for Wal-Mart's money but not Hollywood's. That's not exactly red-state savvy."
I want a strong, healthy opposition party. It doesn't have to be the Democrats, and it's beginning to look like it might not be. The problem is that most of the alternatives are even kookier.
I would love a healthy Democratic party.....one that sits somewhere to the right of the Republicans on the political spectrum.
AGGGGHHHHHHH...makes me crazy.....
RANT OFF!!
Having a viable Democratic Party is important in a two-party system; we need a good opposition party to keep us focused. However, the Democrats seem dead set on committing political suicide.
That is unfortunately not what really happens. In truth the political establishment has been moving steadily leftward for decades under the influence of the mass medias, and not just in this country but throughout the West. The only Republican President of the last 50 years who has been even vaguely conservative was Reagan, and even he didn't do squat domestically.
The US system is set up for two parties. When one goes too far off the reservation, something happens. I hope what happens is that Dems gain their senses, and become the Joe Lieberman party, and stop being the Barbara Boxer party. If they do, they may pick off a lot of voters who are nominally GOP, and make a 2 party system safe for America again. Right now, it's not safe to vote Dem, they are led by the 20 percent of the country that is anti-American or post-American.