The Revolution will not be Carmalized

Anyway here's the score. I read this article this last weekend, but it's probably been out for a while. I thought about posting on it last night but decided not to. I've changed my mind for the simple reason that an article that stays in my head the way this one did probably deserves your attention as well.

It's by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, and its entitled "Party Down." The basic theory is that the Republican Party today is where the Democratic Party was in 1980. In a word deluded.

Just as the GOP in 2000 tended to look at the Clinton administration as an unfortunate detour on the road to a permanent Republican majority, so Democrats in 1976 looked back on the Nixon years as a temporary aberration from the natural order in Washington, one Democrats had and always would dominate. It wasn't just that the party was powerful; the Democrats, returning to the capital in the winter of 1977, thought their principles put them on the right side of history, and the country had come back around to seeing things their way.

But for all the party's political power and institutional strength, it was in an intellectual rut, returning again and again to ideas that had long ago stopped working.

Mr. Wallace-Wells then discusses the fractures in the party; the Republicans are not nearly as united as they would like us to believe.

There are a few differences between 1980 and today--for one President Carter was a moderate, trying to reign in his party's bad habits; President Bush is far more radical, giving aid and comfort to those elements in his party that are further removed from the mainstream. Also of course the Republicans had Reagan in 1980, and like him or loathe him, Reagan was one of the most charismatic politicians America has ever had. I'm not sure Kerry is going to be our Reagan (Clinton was probably that, despite his obvious flaws).

Anyway the argument is worth looking at.