Unimpressed with Republican elites' bickering over the Miers nomination, Baby and Tiny demonstrate proper modus operandi of a majoritarian governing party by joiniing forces against an intruding puddy.
"Principles are a fine thing, but a narrow, partisan definition of principle has led the Republicans to a dead end," writes David Ignatius in a Wall Street Journal Commentary (subscription only). Excerpts:
The bickering over the Miers nomination epitomizes the right's refusal to assume the role of a majoritarian governing party . . . Mr. Bush and the Republicans had a chance after 2004 to become the country's natural governing party.
Mr. Bush squandered this opportunity by falling into the trap that has snared the modern GOP -- of playing to the base rather than to the nation. The Republicans behave as if the country agrees with them on issues, when that demonstrably isn't so. The country doesn't agree about Social Security, doesn't agree about the ethical issues that were dramatized by the torment of Terri Schiavo, doesn't agree about abortion.
Like the Democrats in their years of decline, they are screaming at each other -- not realizing how far they have drifted from the mid-channel markers that have always led to open waters and defined success in American politics.
'Reminds us of something Dr. Sanity said in her normblog profile last June in answer to Norman Geras's question "Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind?":
Abortion. When I was younger I thought the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision was essential to establish women's rights over their own bodies. I now think that women's rights would have inevitably come about anyway and believe that this court decision has been the root cause of the horrible animosity and hatred in our country. This is a personal decision, and the issues involved in it cannot be mandated by a court. Likewise, the issue of gay marriage. These sorts of decisions should be left to the state and/or local level to determine, in order to optimize individual choice and conscience.
Intruder Orange Blossom glares back at Tiny and Baby, reluctantly backing down after considerable triangulation -- Baby seemed to think she was kind of a cutie, but Tiny would have none of it -- acknowledging that the Chelsea Grays are in firm control of the sideyard agenda.
That's what comes of legislating from the bench. It calls to mind Austin Bramwell's cautionary essay for conservatives -- blogged here a couple of months back-- on the rise and fall of the liberal project:
Liberalism came of age in the New Deal, which finally succeeded in replacing representative government with a European-style administrative state, staffed by the nation’s ablest, most idealistic men. After World War II, when the national mood no longer favored reform, liberals turned to an even more elite institution—the Supreme Court—to continue remaking American society. For a generation, liberalism so dominated American life that, while conservatives saw conservatism as the taste of a saving remnant, liberals became convinced that their ideology expressed the natural sentiments of the American people.
Intellectual sclerosis, however, soon set in . . . As Nixon put it, the Democrats became the party of acid, amnesty, and abortion. They have been losing power ever since.
Let's hope the Republicans don't get caught up in a Pauline Kael bubble the way the Democrats did just before Nixon's landslide, waking up one morning to find Supreme Court Justice Harriet Miers being sworn in and shaking their heads in disbelief, asking themselves "How can that be? No one I know voted for her"?
It becomes funny when the leadership has to ask what base and who cares what it thinks? This is what causes party's to collapse combined with the delusion that a party needs to act for the nation rather than for the people that brought you to the party. Its amazing what the Democrats did for Republican interests in the past 50 years or am I forgetting something?
Posted by: ThomasJackson | October 15, 2005 at 11:43 PM