As The World Turns And The Pot Boils
I'm starting to smell a possible cataclysm. A potential for a political tectonic shift.
Let's go back to the Nixon era for just a moment. Nixon's Southern Strategy was, indeed, successful over the short and long terms. Nixon won the presidency and the repubicans won a stronghold on lesser offices.
To be sure, things changed hands, but overall things favored the repubicans.
As the repubican party played on the base that was grown by peeling away southern Democrats, they lost some of their northeastern liberal members. Some (many) of the "Rockefeller Republicans" became Democrats.
The net result, after the Nixon/Ford years and the Carter years was an inexorable move to right. The repubicans moved from reasonable right to hard right to crazy-as-a-shithouse-rat right. The same thing was happening to the Democrats. The party of FDR was changed to its core as the more conservative Rockefeller Republicans and their kindred souls became a significant part of the mainstream Democratic party.
Everybody moved right.
Now, it appears, we may be up against the right-most limit. The crazy-as-a-shithouse-rat right are enjoying their day in the sunshine. And with the sun shining down on them, they're starting to fester a bit. To smell. To be viewed as obnoxious. To have even displeased their financiers.
As their party is starting to come apart, as fissures in their ranks become open chasms, there is a fight for the party's soul.
Will they attract back their old members, now comfortably ensconced as Blue Dog Democrats? Will Democrats try to hold them if they talk about leaving or will the Democrat's left flank hasten their departure in an effort to return the liberal party to a party of . . . . well . . . . liberals?
While I think the crisis we've faced for the last few weeks will shortly draw to a safe conclusion, I think all these potentials for change remain tantalizingly unresolved. Unsettled times such as these open great opportunity to effect real change.
One can hope.
If nothing else, it is certainly true . . . . we live in interesting times.
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