Monday, March 14, 2005

Spinning the Spinning of the Spinning

As many of you know, John Kerry did not in fact defeat George W. Bush last November. This spawned a series of stories in which both sides tried to figure out who's fault that was. Did Kerry run a loser campaign? Did Bush run a great campaign? Was it MoveOn.Org's fault? And, most importantly, have the Democrats lost their way?

If you ask a conservative Republican this last question, the answer is clear. Democrats have lost their way, and we should all be like Zell Miller. Obviously, for a Conservative, the best answer is for America to have two conservative parties and no liberal parties (well maybe we can keep the Greens, since nobody pays that much attention to them anyway).

On the other hand, many liberals also believe we have lost our way. Frankly I doubt there is one liberal in a thousand who is completely satisfied about where the party is going. If that many. And since we just lost an election, it's time for a reevaluation.

The New Republic, a semi liberal magazine, recently ran a series of articles on the future of liberalism, which inspired Michael Barone to respond with his own thoughts. Basically he suggests that since a lot of individual liberals have different ideas on how to move the party forward, and some of those ideas are unfocused (as he presents them), Liberalism is dead in the water. Kind of like that old game of Telephone, only more done on purpose. Liberals are trying to figure out what to do next, so that shows they clearly don't know what to do next. Which is somehow damning.

Oh and Barone gets extra points for continuing to pretend that Liberals have no ideas on Social Security.

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