Comments

1
Just what kind of history are you talking about, Charles? The fruit flavored, packaged variety or the organic locally grown type?
2
Chuck, it's not so much a question of right or wrong when it comes to your writing. It's more of a question of sufferable or insufferable and you sir are definitely the latter.
3
This is something that has been predicted for some time. The problem is that change within the parties that exist is much easier. The GOP was not always the jesus freak party it is today and the dems not always so socially liberal.

Many have tried to form a viable third way (Perot being the most recent one that was moderately successful) but non have succeeded in a long long time.
4
As more and more of the business class and suburban middle class voters turn Democratic, the remaining Republican party is an increasingly poor demographic that could turn the party toward economic populism. Obviously we're not there yet, but I could see it happening over the next 20 years. The two parties are like a slowly spinning yin/yang, each chasing the other's tail.
5
Good for you, Charles, it must be nice when someone acknowleges that you were right after they've claimed you were wrong.
7
The party of Jesus is done for. So much the better for everyone. If a business class rises, as the new Republican party, I don't think they will be in the mood for any of that right wing religious oppression that Bush slavishly followed. It was bad for America because we are at our hearts a pragmatic people. "What does science say?" should be our new mantra. Now all we need to do is clean up the Supreme Court.
6
Charles, you are not the first person to write that the party would change.

You can cast a very large net, and hey, if you catch a minnow, TIME TO START BOASTING!

It's disingenuous and it demonstrates much of the Stranger's success when it comes to things like this (Urban Archipelago, etc.).
8
Interesting, Charles.

Good riddance to those traitors in the party of No.
9
Commenters are quick to point out when you're wrong? I think it's an oversimplification to boil down commenter distaste for you to a simple right/wrong dichotomy. I have noticed that you are often accused of being tasteless, callous, insufferable, incomprehensible or incapable of making a complete argument about a given topic, but not so much flat-out wrong.

And yes, you (among many others) were right about the G.O.P. split that we are now witnessing. Good job.
10
Just because Newt Gingrich says it doesn't make it so. The various elements of the Republican Party can bicker all they want, but when push comes to shove, nobody wants to be the third party in a two party system. If there's one thing Republicans know how to do, it's fall in line.
11
Unfortunately for us all, our system is not currently equipped to allow for a third party to arise. How many electoral votes can a third contender snag? Zero, because the vast majority of states allocate their votes on an all-or-none basis.
12
eh - it could also be that the third party is birthed from the democrat side.

repubs become right wing, dems become working class, new party is green/educated/liberal/poor/etc... party.

i'm not sure which of these three would be the new corporate party.
13
maybe the corporate party will align with the libertarian party.... a four party system!
14
@11 Yeah if you are aiming for the presidency. Congressional districts are not that big, and legislative ones smaller still. An organized third party could easily ensure that every person in a district heard their ideas and message. Hell a candidate could probably knock on a fair number of the doors and talk to many of the voters (Ferguson did it in his run for County Council). There is little media for any candidate so that is not really a factor and it would not take much money. Certainly less than third parties blow on races they lost before they filed for election.

But third parties don't do this. They focus on high profile difficult to win races like president or governor. Honestly I think they do this because they know that they would lose as its not a matter of people hearing their message but agreeing with it.
15
Good Morning Charles,
I disagree with your view of the Republican Party. But, I agree with your macro-view of history. The Republican Party was in terrible shape in 64' and 74' just like the Democratic party was in 80' and 94'. They both revived. I'm sorry to see Specter go. I like him in the GOP (like Specter, I'm a moderate Republican and voted for McCain). And, no, Obama isn't a giant yet. He's been in office a mere 100 days. Finally, the enemy is terror:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/lo…

There will be no revolution or viable 3rd party. Obama has his hands full with a great economic crisis and a possible pandemic. Overnight, things could swing right back to the GOP.
16
IF the Republican party really does fade out and lose power, that will leave a funny/sad legacy:
Started with Abraham Lincoln and ended with George W. Bush.
17
Only occasionally is it a question of right or wrong, usually when you take the world as you've stereotyped it to be and not as it actually is. For example, you are wrong about working class whites. Take a look at the recent demographic research by Andrew Gelman---he's even written a popular science book about it so it should be accessible to you.

Most of the time your "ideas" are a rehashing of op-ed page wisdom dressed up in the language of someone who desperately wants others to think that he's smart. In fumbling with even those simple ideas you manage to botch them into something that, as the canard from Wolfgang Pauli goes, is "not right. It's not even wrong."
18
@15 You know, people like you like to point out that Obama has been in office one hundred days and he's been wrong all along. But Bush was president nine months when we were attacked and you never hear people like you blame him for having his head in the sand. Things will not swing back to the GOP for a long while because they are just plain lousy at governing.
19
Vince,
I never said Obama has been wrong all along. I said he's been in office 100 days.
20
The collapse of the finance capitalism has made the Chinese model attractive to a lot of those who naturally tend towards authoritarianism. The term "Beijing Consensus" has been getting tossed around a lot lately. The Euro Central Bank seems to be working for Germany and France, but failing other countries (Spain). There's a new admiration among policymakers for the kind of central planning and state banking that has propelled China's remarkable growth.
21
The problem with history is that it all depends on where your reference points are. When you discuss "the larger steps of history," to what exactly are you referring? The Republican party, for instance, has already gone through at least one major cleve in its ranks in the last 100 years, when the sitting Republican president (Theodore Roosevelt) broke ranks with his party to run as the Progressive candidate in 1912. That intra-party split continued well into the 1920s.

My point is that even if the current Republican party splits along the lines you're talking about, it by no means heralds the kind of enduring permanance implied by a "larger step" of history. Just as the Republican party reunified in the face of Democrat FDR's 4-term run, and the Democrats reunified after the Dixiecrat runs of Strom Thurmond and Harry Byrd, it's more likely this is just a passing footnote. There may be some upheaval, but in the end there is no reason to doubt that America's politics will soon return to the 2-party template it has mostly followed throughout its existence.
22
Hegelian teleology is in the eye of the beholder. And it's a bunch of crap. Shit happens then folks comb through looking to hew that crap to their notion of progress. See Walter Benjamin's take on Klee's painting Angelus Novus - it belies the notion of historical march towards or away from anything, much less "the end" of any kind of history.
23
#15 is right. Specter leaving is no more an indicator of a GOP crack-up than Sen. Richard Shelby's defection to the GOP in 1994 was an indicator of a Democratic crack-up.
24
Horn meet Mudede's lips...
25
have they tried family counseling?

and who gets custody of the Palin kids?
26
Well Charles, looks like you sure rustled someone's jimmies. Somethin' fierce.

(btw, I keep the unregistereds off-- I don't need any more crazy in my life, thank you: I get enough of it from Congress & the Republicans.)

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