Republicans are bracing themselves to get destroyed in November. In today’s Times, David Brooks refers to November as “the coming deluge.” He’s been predicting big doom in November for awhile. His columns have ranged from “we’re going to hell in a handbasket” to “the Democratic leaders are pretty moderate, so we’re going to be OK.” This column was about an 8 on the Brooks panic scale.
In this column, he writes that the Republicans have been taken over by the religious right and the libertarians, and we need to go back to the social traditionalists who are concerned with values and less about God. Foley and Hastert are not the posterboys for good wholesome American values.
Security and values have been the Republican strenghts, since Reagan brought in working-class Catholic men into the fold. The declining support for the War in Iraq and the Foley scandal have destroyed their hegemony in this area.
Now the Times is talking realignment. I don’t know if you can have a real party realignment without a strong leader, like FDR or Lincoln, leading the charge. Don’t know if Hillary is really up to the task. Gore sure isn’t.
Really fascinating article by the Times looking at age of maturation and life long party attachments.
Apt. 11d 
The part of that article about age/party affiliation that gave me an enormous headache was this:
“What’s more, Democrats will need solutions to capitalize on their opportunity, said Professor Jack Pitney Jr. of Claremont McKenna College.
“Franklin Roosevelt had a clear answer, a very specific program, the New Deal,” he said. “Do the Democrats have the same kind of clear answer to Iraq? It is damaging to Republicans, but it is hard to see how it is constructive to Democrats.””
Historians everywhere banged their heads against the nearest wall. If there was anything the New Deal wasn’t, until after the fact, it wasn’t specific. In fact, FDR is a classic example of a guy promising one thing — any thing, in fact — during the campaign, and then turning around and trying something else. And the things he tried were often contradictory in purpose and aims, such that comparing the first and second new deals is standard fodder for intro US history courses.
ARRRRRRRRRGH.
If the Democrats’ problem now is that they don’t have a specific program, AND they need to emulate FDR to enact a long-term change in alliances, then I think we’re set. FDR was the God of “no specific program” campaigns, and of try-anything governance.
That’s assuming I believe that FDR gets credit for a long-term Democratic party alliance, which I don’t. As early as 1948, after all, the Dixiecrats were threatening to break free of the party.
The long-term Democratic House majority probably owes its longevity to the same sort of gerrymandering and incumbancy advantages that will still help the Republicans this time around (in the sense that the new Democratic majority, if there is one, will likely be small). Trying to link Presidential and Congressional party fortunes together in twentieth-century history is really a fool’s game.
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