Wingnut Editorial - Democratic Underground

Ms Chicklet

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Sun Mar-06-05 10:38 PM
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Wingnut Editorial

From the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American. They're not kidding about the "Republican" part.

Copyright © 2005 Republican-American

They're called partisan realignments, periods of seismic shifts in U.S. politics like the one that began in 1936 with the re-election of Franklin Roosevelt and ushered in six decades of liberal Democratic dominance. Many political observers believe a new realignment started with the Republican Revolution of 1994 and is accelerating under the Bush presidency. One of the more recent ruminations on this subject came in a USA Today op-ed by Ross K. Baker.

Noting President Bush's three rounds of tax cuts and his re-election, as well as the success of the Iraqi elections, Professor Baker postulated that continued GOP control of government "might well produce more conservative social legislation, a relaxation of regulations on business and environmental rules and more truculent policy toward countries that sponsor terrorism. If he could pull it off, Bush would find himself in the select company of such presidents as Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt -- all of whom engineered realignments."

Before President Bush's likeness is chiseled into Mount Rushmore, consider four factors working against the GOP domination:

President Bush has not yet learned how to say no to wasteful spending.

The party has too many "Nancy Johnson Republicans." It has an entire left wing of politicians who claim to be fiscal conservatives and social moderates. Since those are competing philosophies, social liberalism usually wins out because the resulting government largess is the surest way to ensure incumbency. It explains Rep. Johnson's support for the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and a good many other costly social programs during her long congressional career. Though small in number, NJRs are the swing voters on important legislation, which positions them to water down reforms, lard-up social programs, etc. Consequently, true fiscal constructivism cannot rule the day as long as NJRs are in the way.

Liberals continue to dominate two key cultural institutions: the public schools and the news media. Until conservatives can end the indoctrination of children and the propagandizing of adults, even modest, sensible reforms such as partial voluntary privatization of Social Security will be next to impossible to achieve.

Liberals reign supreme in America's courts. If recent rulings on the Ten Commandments, the Pledge of Allegiance and same-sex marriage have taught Americans anything, it's that Republicans can pass conservative legislation, relax business and environmental rules, and enact tort-law reforms all they want. But before sanity can be restored to the judiciary, Republicans must purge the system of the left-wing loonies and replace them with jurists interested in upholding the rule of law instead of legislating from the bench. In the interim, liberals always will be able to find a judge to strike down conservative reforms as unconstitutional.

It may well come to pass that we are seeing the dawn of a new political era for America. But even if Republicans can overcome these considerable obstacles, it will be decades before the fruits of their labors will be evident.