Posted on 02/24/2013 5:33:51 PM PST by neverdem
The chorus out of Washington, from the chattering classes to conservatives themselves, is that the sky is falling on the Republican Party.
If only those people would look at a diagram of our electoral history, they would see that nothing is permanent in American politics.
“While it may seem as though the Democrats have secured a dominant position over the Republicans, political party fortunes in America regularly change abruptly,” says Lara Brown, an expert on electoral politics.
Brown, the author of “Jockeying for the American Presidency,” points to the most startling turnaround in modern times — the eight-year revolution between Lyndon Johnson's victory in 1964 (he won more than 61 percent of the popular vote, and 44 states and the District of Columbia; Barry Goldwater won only six states and 38 percent of the vote) and Richard Nixon's re-election in 1972 (he won close to 61 percent of the popular vote and 49 states; George McGovern won only Massachusetts and D.C.).
And last year's presidential election was no runaway or realigning election, folks, despite all the hyperbole to the contrary. Remember, President Obama lost votes between 2008 and 2012, not normally an indication of an ascendant party.
Americans' oscillation has been in hyperdrive for 20 years.
Democrats largely prevailed in the 1992 presidential elections; two years later, Republicans crushed them. Democrats won again in 1996 and 1998; the 2000 election was a tie; then Republicans triumphed in 2002 and 2004. Democrats came back in 2006 and 2008; Republicans won in 2010; and Democrats were back in 2012.
Sean Trende, a political scientist and numbers-cruncher at RealClearPolitics, doesn't buy the idea that Republicans are as bad off today as Democrats were in 2004: “Yes, they lost the presidential election by a similar margin, but Democrats were a minority in the House and well off of their peak in the states.”
Republicans are almost at a postwar high in the House of Representatives, with only 1946 and 2010 resulting in a larger share of the chamber being held by them; the postwar highs also are true if you look at the number of statehouse seats held by the party and its 30 governorships.
“The House numbers are somewhat due to redistricting,” explains Trende. “But even if you assume that redistricting saved the party 20 seats — a very generous assumption — the GOP would find itself only a slight minority in the lower chamber, and well above its postwar average.”
The Senate does show some signs of weakness for Republicans, according to Trende. At the same time, 24 states went for Mitt Romney in 2012, and 26 states were more Republican than the country as a whole — suggesting that the basic Senate playing field for Republicans is still intact.
“Back in 2005, after George W. Bush won re-election, most of the news and analysis in the early part of the year focused on whether or not Republicans had created a ‘permanent majority' and whether the 2004 election had been a realignment akin to William McKinley's in 1896,” Brown says.
Back then, news story after news story focused on the civil war between Howard Dean's “Deaniacs” and establishment Democrats, and whether that fracture would so divide the party that Republicans would win future elections in a walk.
Today, the media focus on the civil war between grassroots tea-party types and establishment Republicans, says Keystone College political science professor Jeff Brauer. Sure, there is a divide between those two, but Brauer cautions against writing off Republicans.
“The GOP still has the market on fundamental American ideals we were founded on,” Brauer says. “They are still the deficit hawks in a time of unprecedented national debt and generally the party of small government.
“Those ideals not only keep Republicans relevant in the national debate, they keep (Republicans) controlling that debate.”
Today, every news story about the Republican Party deals with how it is working to improve itself while Democrats are in the position that most winning parties come to be in — one of complacency.
And it is precisely that “winner's mentality” — the idea that one doesn't need to do anything to improve — that usually is a party's downfall in future elections, according to Brown.
Salena Zito covers politics for Trib Total Media. (412-320-7879 or szito@tribweb.com)
The old metrics don’t apply any more. The national news media is very nearly owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the commiescum left.
Election fraud has become so ubiquitous that few even notice anymore.
National policies, such as immigration, are being manufactured to support the left, exclusively, by flooding the country with millions who are guaranteed to vote Dem if they’re made legal to vote, and often are illegally registered to vote anyway.
Anyone who still believes there’s a peaceful way out of this, other than full on surrender, is a fool. The system is far too broken to be of any value in pushing back.
The truth is that Romney was a terrible candidate ~ he didn’t even start a campaign.
Teddy Roosevelt started the move to the Left ~ and that’s where he went.
The use of divided and separated powers, and dual government (states and the federal entity) mitigate the effect off a singular majority.
The existence of single member districts DESTROYS that effect. That's because the only way you can win is to get 50%+1 vote. This creates a situation where the losers have to coalesce to hope to have a chance to do that themselves.
American political results have been relatively evenly divided for 200 years ~ any particular district might go one way rather than the other, but in the aggregate, barring corrupt realignments of district lines, we come doggone close to that 50/50 balance that's imposed on our system.
In the interval between Buchanan and present, the Democrats also had Grover Cleveland do his win, lose, win thing (iow, two full terms, but didn’t succeed himself); he was the veto king I believe, until FDR hogged the office, and GC loved the so-called Robber Barons, leading to the Pubbies’ Progressive era.
...and thank you, L, for the thoughtful reply.
I tell my students that Cleveland was the last good Democrat.
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