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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (26990)	8/22/2006 2:50:43 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542059

In the long run, parties and movements moving up and down over decades is a very normal cycle in American politics, along with a broader consensus for something like the New Deal becoming a broad consensus for tax cuts and anticommunism. We tend to forget that since most people's memories don't extend before 1950, and rarely back to the nineteenth century. No doubt conservatives are prominent right now. No doubt they failed twice to turn that prominence into lasting electoral majorities. Where do they go next? Only the cyclical waves will tell us. We know that they have barely made a dent, if that, in increasing their ideological followers in the electorate. We know their presidents cannot pass on their legacy to successors who will continue to implement their programs and achieve electoral success. So let's put aside the small distinction over what is more prominent or not. This whole discussion began with the idea that conservatives have a lot more kids, most of whom follow their parents' example and also vote conservative. That is not borne out by the electoral results since the 1950's. Perhaps because very few voices on the right ever engage in constructive self-criticism to figure out why the elusive conservative majority is such a phantom. Ideologues always need to beat their own drum and beat up the other guy. It's one of the fatal weaknesses of ideological movements. Which is why they never last in power for long.