The Submerging Republican Majority (Barf alert!)

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove, the political mastermind George W. Bush called Boy Genius, was wont to draw an analogy with the election of 1896, in which the Republican William McKinley drubbed William Jennings Bryan. McKinley's election ushered in a 35-year era chiefly characterized by G.O.P. dominance; so, too, Rove argued, would Bush's hasten the progress toward an era of virtual one-party rule. And Rove's bold prediction seemed plausible. Over time, the Republicans have increased their margin in Congress and reversed years of Democratic dominance in statehouses and State Legislatures. The conservative columnist Fred Barnes declared in 2003 that Republicans had attained a state of dominance last seen in the 1920's, the end of the period McKinley ushered in. Realignment, he wrote, "has reached its entrenchment phase."

Or has it? President Bush is now more unpopular than Bill Clinton was at any time in his tenure, while public approval of the G.O.P.-dominated Congress has plummeted to 23 percent, a level last seen in October 1994, the month before the Democrats suffered one of the most humiliating wipeouts in the history of Congressional elections. Many political analysts now say that the Democrats have a real shot at retaking the House of Representatives and an outside chance of winning the Senate too. A great deal can happen between now and November, not to mention between now and 2008, but the Boy Genius certainly looks a lot less brilliant than he did a few years back.

George W. Bush is, by contrast, a radical figure, a profoundly self-confident leader willing to stake all on his unshakable inner convictions — which is to say that this president made himself a hostage to fortune in a way that the coldly calculating McKinley never would have done.

Oh yeah right. So on Friday the reason why on your NUMBER 1 issue, Iraq, Democrats, 39 Democrats Senators and 43 Democrat Congresscritters told the Democrat Party leader ship to go play with themselves. That vote was the most stinking rebuke to any Party's leadership in US History. A complete vote of NO CONFIDENCE in the Democrat Party leadership from Dean to Murtha to Pelosie to Kerry et al.

Note to all self appointed Political "Experts", Polls are so much noise, VOTES actually count. Friday's Iraq vote shows you just how much trouble the Democrats really are in.

The writers analysis about McKinley is on the mark. There are a few exceptions with his analysis of current political events, however.

>>>>In a shambles, the [Democratic] party took a decisive turn to the left in 1896 by choosing the populist Bryan, who ran again in 1900 and 1908. Today's Democrats are much closer to the mainstream ...

The Democratic Party of today is no where near being aligned with mainstream America. Its about as leftist as its ever been and Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Kennedy, Kerry and other liberals in the Congress prove that point.

>>>>Rove and Bush have driven an already conservative party to the right.

The idea that Bush and Rove have advanced conservatism is a joke. Outside of his taxcuts Bush has grabbed the domestic policy center and ran with it. There is nothing conservative about governing over the largest welfare state in US history. There is nothing conservative about adding the third largest entitlement program to the federal bureaucracy. Bush`s trillion dollar Prescription Drug Program joins Social Security and Medicare in the trio of creeping social liberal programs of big governemnt Republicanism. There is nothing conservative about Bush`s support for the Senate's highly liberal immigration reform proposal, aka. "McCain-Kennedy". There is nothing conservative about Bush signing into law John McCain's un-Constitutional CFR legislation, or McCain's torture amendment to the 2006 Defense Appropriations bill.

On domestic issues, Bush is no cosnervative. Bush is a status quo centrist at best, with liberal spending habits matched by few Presidents in our history. FDR and LBJ come to mind.

Today's Democrats are much closer to the mainstream

Folks, there it is in a nutshell. The Nu Yawk Slimes continue to live in a protective bubble, detached from reality, in a world where the Republicans are evil, knuckle-dragging cretins and the Dims are knights in shining armor, and where they still call the shots in news and opinion.

"Karl Rove, the political mastermind George W. Bush called Boy Genius, was wont to draw an analogy with the election of 1896, in which the Republican William McKinley drubbed William Jennings Bryan."

I have a feeling the comparison was more about Karl Rove wanting to compare himself to Mark Hanna.

William Jennings Bryan at least had convictions. Gore and Kerry even lacked those.

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