Ebb and Flow

Karl Rove and Tom Delay wanted to transform this country into a "permanent republican majority," at least that is what they stated. Political power does not work that way.
Assume that in the 2004 election that they had won the presidency and every senate and house seat in Congress. Even if the Democratic party ceased to exist as a viable alternative, opposition would form within the Republican party, resulting in an opposition party.

By attempting to achieve such dominance, they did the nation the favor of ensuring their own demise. They telegraphed their intentions, revealing that they intended to rely on tactics that served the interest of their political party first. They spent their intellectual capital on pr and manipulation. While I realize that a tenant of their philosophy is that government essentially does not work, proving that point while one is in charge of that government is not a way to attain that "permanent majority."

I am thinking about this today because I think it is important to remember that just because you vote for someone, you do not have to be loyal to him or his party. You may like him or her, root for them, and be inspired by them, but be careful not to serve them or the parties that are a product of. I write this to remind myself to not fall into the trap that I think many supporters of Bush have fallen into to in the past eight years. They have played a game of twister to maintain that Bush and company are adherents to a conservative philosophy, letting him define their ideology -- in essence redefining the term ideology.

The parties ebb and flow, that is politics. If one party gets too powerful, it is by definition covering too much ground and bringing together too many coalitions. It is inevitable that those coalitions will break apart, redefining themselves in a different constituency, possibly within the opposition party. The best example I can think of is the Democratic party in the early sixties. It held both the biggest proponents of Civil Rights, as well as the most stalwart opponents. The evolution of that divergence is a much longer, more boring post, that I hopefully will never make. But it did lead to the redefinition of the party's that has largely held until today (maybe literally today, we'll see).