Will The Nut Roots Be The Downfall Of The Left?
According to the NYT’s, possible:
Twelve years ago, the Democratic Party was still captive to a series of single-issue interest groups ” big labor, the environmental lobby, civil rights groups ” that pressured the party to pursue their own parochial agendas, making it difficult to challenge some liberal orthodoxies. These groups still matter on Capitol Hill, of course, but since Bush’s election they have been giving way to a new array of powerful actors: MoveOn.org, liberal philanthropists, crusading bloggers. These new forces don’t care so much about litmus-test policies, but they are adamant about confronting the president. The influence of the netroots, as the growing Web-based Democrats have come to be called, is likely to stifle any inclination toward compromise or creativity, making it difficult for Democrats to transition from an opposition party to a governing one. Thoughtful and dynamic leadership, after all, requires a willingness to negotiate and a tolerance for dissent ” which is the main reason that Republicans now find themselves glumly packing boxes rather than gleefully packing the courts.
As Allahpundit asked, “If and when they do screw up, what’ll replace them? Republicans? Or some as yet uncreated political chimera stitched together from various left- and right-wing issues? A new, hybrid ideology. A Frankenstein ” but in a good way!”
[T]hese two waves are more accurately viewed as part of the same continuous seismic disturbance: the growing frustration of voters with the Washington crowd of both parties, who seem stuck in the same ideological debate they were having in 1975, while the rest of the country struggles mightily with the emerging economic and international threats of 2006. After the midterms, that tidal resentment has now washed away both of our old governing philosophies: the expansive and often misguided liberalism that dominated American politics up through the 1970s, as well as the impractical, mean-spirited brand of conservatism that rose up in reaction to it.
It may be, then, that we have just witnessed the last big election of the 20th century; the question now is what kind of different, more relevant ideologies might rise from the ruins. Or, as Simon Rosenberg, the Democratic strategist, recently put it in making much the same argument, “Like two heavyweight boxers stumbling into the 15th round of a championship fight, the two great ideologies of the 20th century stumble, exhausted, tattered and weakened, into a very dynamic and challenging 21st century.” The era of baby-boomer politics ” with its culture wars, its racial subtext, its archaic divisions between hawks and doves and between big government and no government at all ” is coming to a merciful close. Our elections may become increasingly generational rather than ideological ” and not a moment too soon.
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November 19, 2006 - 01:14 PM on November 19th, 2006
“for confirmation see the election results of Novemember 7, 2006″
Not to mention 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2004.
November 20, 2006 - 04:32 PM on November 20th, 2006
Demon-craps, plenty of nuts, fruits too! just look at Frisco!