The Crossed Pond

There’s a title that ought to raise some heckles.

So, I’m on a month-long hiatus from regular computer access, but I’ll still be popping in now and then.

This post by Andrew Sullivan caught my eye. He takes a look at the latest Pew poll of public opinion changes over the last ten years, and finds in it a heckuva lot of evidence that Karl Rove’s slash-and-burn style of short-term political gain may have reaped a lot of long-term damage for the Republican brand, both in terms of party ID sort of stats as well as broader issues of ideology. To some degree it’s not all surprising–the young have tended to be more liberal than older generations, always. But that isn’t a given, either. The Republicans made huge gains in the youth vote during the 80s and 90s, at one point almost reaching parity, and certainly creating at least a few generations for whom conservatism was, for lack of a better word, “cool”. Since 2000, I strongly suspect–and Pew and Sully seem to agree–that all of that has been thrown out with the bathwater.

The Republicans spent nigh on 60 years building themselves into a position where they could make a legitimate challenge to American liberalism of the sort that really hit its peak with FDR. They did a remarkable job of building a movement from the ground up, slowly but surely. And finally, from the blood sweat and tears of generations of conservative soldiers, they managed to reach a position where a permanent conservative majority seemed not just possible, but even likely. And almost the MOMENT they reached the zenith of their accomplishment, when it would FINALLY be time to turn their means into ends, they managed to not just balk, but positively run for the hills of corruption, incompetence, short-viewed partisan hackery, and selling out their own agenda that they had spent a lifetime bringing to the forefront of the national political conversation, and in so doing systematically dismantled everything with a speed and fervor that took almost everybody by surprise (some have the wool over their eyes still).

Sort of amazing, when you stop to gape at it.