Ashley Cruseturner: Are the Two Major Parties Too Lost to Right this Ship?
[Ashley Cruseturner teaches American history at McLennan Community College in Waco, Texas. ]
Eerily like the Democratic Party of 1854, the Democratic Party of 2010 may be a presidential election victory away from an ignominious repudiation and a decades-long detour through the political wilderness. Like the 1850s, the thrilling and astonishingly decisive victory of a handsome dark horse, paradoxically, may mask the structural instability of the Democratic ascendancy. Under the sweet but delusional spell of sudden and unexpected congressional majorities and control of the White House, Democrats then and now misread their mandate and misjudged the durability of their dominance. Ironically, the recent meteoric elevation of party fortunes in 2006 and 2008, the euphoric triumph of Barack Obama, and perhaps even a hard-fought reelection win in 2012 by default, may well offer the Democratic Party of today one final and spectacular opportunity to definitively demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of modern liberalism.
In the same vein, the modern Republican Party runs the risk of misinterpreting the looming Democratic catastrophe as a GOP success. Democrats have struggled mightily to characterize the Republicans as the “party of no,” which, at least during this season of off-year canvasses and special elections, proved a compelling and winning strategy. More accurately, sensing the swelling public frustration, GOP leaders have merely opposed the Democratic overreach on sheer political instinct. Banking on continued economic stagnation, and expecting (justifiably it seems) an endless supply of Democratic maladroitness, hypocrisy, and arrogance, Republicans envision a dramatic midterm conquest commensurate with the Revolution of 1994....
Right now no one in the Republican Party is seriously addressing the tough issues that pose an existential threat to our survival as a nation: the trillions of dollars in debt we currently owe and the tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities looming in our future. The best the GOP can do is offer a promise to return to the status quo ante Pelosi: the pledge to stay on the road to disaster —but drive at a more moderate speed.
Is that really a winning message for 2010 and beyond?
During the 1850s, the two national parties proved utterly inadequate to the task of responding to, or even understanding, the impending crisis that threatened the Union. Our current state of affairs possesses a hauntingly familiar echo.
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Eerily like the Democratic Party of 1854, the Democratic Party of 2010 may be a presidential election victory away from an ignominious repudiation and a decades-long detour through the political wilderness. Like the 1850s, the thrilling and astonishingly decisive victory of a handsome dark horse, paradoxically, may mask the structural instability of the Democratic ascendancy. Under the sweet but delusional spell of sudden and unexpected congressional majorities and control of the White House, Democrats then and now misread their mandate and misjudged the durability of their dominance. Ironically, the recent meteoric elevation of party fortunes in 2006 and 2008, the euphoric triumph of Barack Obama, and perhaps even a hard-fought reelection win in 2012 by default, may well offer the Democratic Party of today one final and spectacular opportunity to definitively demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of modern liberalism.
In the same vein, the modern Republican Party runs the risk of misinterpreting the looming Democratic catastrophe as a GOP success. Democrats have struggled mightily to characterize the Republicans as the “party of no,” which, at least during this season of off-year canvasses and special elections, proved a compelling and winning strategy. More accurately, sensing the swelling public frustration, GOP leaders have merely opposed the Democratic overreach on sheer political instinct. Banking on continued economic stagnation, and expecting (justifiably it seems) an endless supply of Democratic maladroitness, hypocrisy, and arrogance, Republicans envision a dramatic midterm conquest commensurate with the Revolution of 1994....
Right now no one in the Republican Party is seriously addressing the tough issues that pose an existential threat to our survival as a nation: the trillions of dollars in debt we currently owe and the tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities looming in our future. The best the GOP can do is offer a promise to return to the status quo ante Pelosi: the pledge to stay on the road to disaster —but drive at a more moderate speed.
Is that really a winning message for 2010 and beyond?
During the 1850s, the two national parties proved utterly inadequate to the task of responding to, or even understanding, the impending crisis that threatened the Union. Our current state of affairs possesses a hauntingly familiar echo.