A Stitch in Haste

Note: Originally posted 9/15/04 -- re-stamped in light of updates, infra.

A piece in OpinionJournal revisits an issue I covered a while back:

The Democratic Party is in descendancy. It's not just that John Kerry's campaign is sinking like a stone, or that George W. Bush is turning out to be a resilient politician. The Democratic leadership is in electoral denial, failing to grasp a profound shift among American voters and therefore on the cusp not of winning back control of one of the branches of government, but of handing control over to Republicans for a generation or more.

This denial has been fed by moderate electoral victories, most notably Bill Clinton's eight year control of the White House, Al Gore's popular-vote plurality in 2000, and what turned out to be transient congressional gains in 1996, 1998 and 2000. Democrats still seem to believe they can win back the White House without making any significant modification to their party's policies--that they are the natural majority party just waiting to be given back control.

A broader look, however, reveals a much different electoral landscape. Somewhere during the Carter presidency Americans lost confidence in the ideas of the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton ran and won as a "third way" Democrat in 1992, when it seemed safe not to worry about foreign threats. When he took office, he tried to move the country to the left, raising taxes and rolling out a plan to socialize medicine.

The flaw in Mr. Clinton's belief that the country was ready to swing left again was revealed in the congressional elections two years into his presidency. For the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was president, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Two years later Mr. Clinton signed the most comprehensive welfare reform legislation since the New Deal. Al Gore might have walked away with the presidency in 2000 if he'd learned the same lesson from 1994 that Mr. Clinton apparently did--that liberal ideas are a loser at the ballot box.

As I blogged previously:

Let the Democratic Party continue to decline...into the party of the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor -- two groups on the decline in America. And in the wake of its demise, a new two-party system could emerge: the Republicans of the backward-looking fiscal and social conservative wing (i.e., today's neo-cons) and the fiscal conservative but social progressive, anti-elitist, small-l "libertarian" party that would emerge from the swelling ranks of the disaffected in today's Republican Party (perhaps we could call them "pro-cons").

The OpinionJournal piece is a good review of the Democratic side of my thesis, though it glosses over the Republican side, namely the volcano under the party that may very well split it down the road.

The two models of the Republican Party cannot exist simultaneously for any extended period of time. The neo-conservative (I might prefer the term "hyper-conservative") "Ozzie and Harriet, Nascar Dad" faction that still clings to the "little tent" exclusivity of the party by clinging to minority views on abortion, church and state, immigration, gay rights, original intent constitutional interpretation, states rights over individual rights, etc., cannot peaceably coexist forever with the small-l libertarian "big tent" Republicans who cling to the party's (theoretical) fiscal restraint, personal responsibility and national sovereignty principles, but also demand greater respect for civil liberties, privacy rights and respect for capitalist ideals.

Stated differently, the Republican Party is starting to look less like a political party and more like a coalition government. And coalition governments have a tendency to fall apart.

If the Democratic Party does indeed self-destruct, the Republican Party simply cannot be the "only super-party" in American politics. We need (at least) a two-party system. Could a small-l libertarian party be the answer?

UPDATE #1: VodkaPundit has some fresh numbers.

UPDATE #2: Meanwhile, Professor Bainbridge, invoking the mad panic to pass gay marriage bans quickly before all the bigots die off (see here), not to mention a very confused analogy to Ireland (huh?), would like nothing more than for "licentious libertarians" to leave the Republican Party:

So let libertarians like [Bruce] Bartlett desert the GOP. Those of us who remain will be all the stronger.

Political eugenics. Just the sort of thing I might expect from a Catholic.

Will Baude of Crescat Sententia also has some thoughts.

Meanwhile, submandave takes a very different view of why the Democrats are where they are today.

In any case, as I said above: Coalition parties, like coalition governments, cannot long thrive.

Related Posts:
Two-Party System, But Which Two Parties?
Two-Party System: Millionaires versus Billionaires

(Cross-linked at Outside the Beltway.)