November 15, 2006

The View from Across the Pond

Julian Borger writes in the Guardian:
"Karl Rove, it appears, is mortal after all. . . .

"'Just because you lose one ballgame, you don't lose your genius,' the former House majority leader, Tom DeLay argued today. But it is clear Mr Rove has lost more than just an election. His plan to build a permanent majority by solidifying the Republican base and wooing social conservatives among Hispanics and black people, lies in ruins. Hispanics voted Democrat by a margin of almost three to one. And stirring up the culture war with contests over abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage, may still have helped win a few seats, but the constant polarising of American politics ultimately alienated centrists, whose importance Mr Rove had scorned in his focus on mobilising hardliners."
John Dickerson writes in Slate: "Today Republican strategists were not talking about the GOP realignment that Rove once predicted but, as one put it, 'a six to 10 year climb out from' Rove's tactics, which have emphasized the base over the political middle."
*_*_*
Puts me in mind of the ‘Thousand Year Reich'. Lasted about as long, too.
Unfortunately, there's no Marshall Plan, this time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't see the GOP climbing out too quickly. They swung so very far to the extreme right that they alienated the middle, once held in sway through a web of lies and deception that only the most inbred of the extreme right still believe. (I actually talked to a gal the other fay that still believes that Saddam had WMD and that he helped plan 9/11.)

Where can they go? If they move to the middle, the right drops away. Their entire infrastructure is invested in getting out that extreme right base.

If Democrats deliver on their promises and avoid the corporate money trap they should do well.

two crows said...

my hope is that they've shot themselves in the foot so badly that recovery will take decades at least.

I've read that, once people vote one way for 2 or 3 elections, they tend to continue voting that way. this is said to be especially true of newer voters.

hope that holds true of the people who either swung to the dem side -- or voted for the first time -- last week.

Anonymous said...

I hope so too. The things that could accelerate the process are a self-destruct by the Dems or a extremely popular GOP candidate for President.