[NYTr] Repubs Expect a "Catastrophe" Next November

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by tsimonds (activ-l)

New York Observer - Aug 27, 2007
http://www.observer.com/2007/reality-america-isn-t-conservative

Reality: America Isn't Conservative

by Joe Conason

As Karl Rove exits stage right with his ruined dreams of rightist
hegemony, all the political signs and portents tell us that America is
turning the other way. No doubt the departing boy genius would dispute
that assertion as liberal wishful thinking, as would many on the right.
But they cannot so easily dismiss The Economist, an avowedly
conservative voice that is among the oldest and most respected
periodicals in the world.

Framing the shift on the cover of its Aug. 11 issue with a questionIs
America turning left?the magazines editors conclude in their lead essay
that the answer is yes, probably.

Having recaptured Congress last year, the Democrats are on course to
retake the presidency in 2008, says the venerable British weekly, which
blames the destruction of the vaunted Republican machine on the
ideological excess and breathtaking incompetence of the Bush
administration, as well as the sleaziness of the G.O.P. leadership in
Congress.

The editorial warns fellow conservatives against claiming that George W.
Bush failed to fulfill their agenda. The president is a lame duck but
not a good scapegoat, because rather than betraying the right, he has
given it virtually everything it craved, from humongous tax cuts to
conservative judges. The worst political errors of the Bush regime,
from its ruinous war in Iraq to the awful Terri Schiavo intervention,
sprang directly from the brilliant minds of the religious right and the
neoconservatives.

Now the American people seem to be reacting to conservative over-reach
by turning left. More want universal health insurance; more distrust
force as a way to bring about peace; more like greenery; ever more
dislike intolerance on social issues. The magazine also presents a
thorough briefing and even more gloomy analysis of the current
condition of the American right, noting that conservative activists are
openly angry and depressed while Republican officials privately
anticipate a catastrophe next November.

The Economists doomsaying is still more persuasive because its top
staffers predicted only a few years ago that the Republican right would
fulfill the dreams of Mr. Rove. Back in 2004, Economist editor John
Micklethwait and Washington bureau chief Adrian Wooldridge published The
Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, a best-selling book that
insisted that the United States is an inherently conservative country
that was only growing more so under the tutelage of a powerful
coalition allied with the Republican Partyand that the remnant of
American liberals should simply acknowledge their status as a permanent
minority relegated to irrelevance. Right-wingers themselves, the
authors predicted that the Republicans could expect a bright and
boundless future thanks to favorable demographic trends, bolstered by
young people who supposedly leaned right regardless of ethnicity,
geography, education or profession.

Happily, neither Mr. Micklethwait nor Mr. Wooldridge has paid much for
their bad bet. Indeed, the latter is now the magazines Washington bureau
chief and featured columnist; the former has been promoted to editor in
chief. They deserve to be congratulated not only for climbing the
professional ladder, but for confronting the political realities that
may now be somewhat embarrassing to both of them.

The Economists editorsand all their once triumphal comradesmight have
avoided such foolish predictions if they had paid more attention to the
nuances of American politics and less to the self-serving propaganda of
the Republican noise machine. They might have noticed, for instance,
that despite the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore and
Ralph Nader together decisively outperformed Mr. Bush. Or that
Republican power in the Senate owes more to the outsize clout of small
states than to a true electoral majority.

Opinion surveys have provided copious evidence that contradicted the
conventional wisdom about the nations political outlook. Astute analysts
at Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog group, recently
released The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America Is a
Myth, an exhaustive study of reams of polling data from nonpartisan
sources that shows that American voters are not just now becoming more
progressive, as 2008 approaches. (See http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/
for the full study.)

On salient issues, despite the plurality of respondents who always
identify themselves as conservative, the American people have favored
progressive policies for many years. With all due respect to The
Economist, favorable attitudes toward universal health care,
environmental stewardship, economic fairness and social tolerance did
not suddenly arrive from nowhere this year or even last year. Support
for increasing the minimum wage, keeping abortion legal, strong
environmental and consumer protections and higher taxes on the wealthy
and corporations are among the most durable results in polls from one
decade to the next.