Sunset of the GOP
Let's talk about the election. My prediction all along, which I will now put in writing, is a 50-50 Senate, a Democratic majority in the House. The three key Senate races, MO, TN and VA, have long been identified by analysts as the states which will determine control of the Senate. I think the Republicans will barely hang onto MO and TN, and Jim Webb will narrowly win in VA. NJ is also close, a possible Republican pickup, but I predict that the Dems will barely hold this one as well. Thus we'll have an evenly divided Senate, with Dick "simulating drowning on a prisoner is not torture" Cheney casting the tiebreaking vote. Another wildcard is Joe Lieberman who has claimed he will caucus with the Democrats should he win his independent Senate bid, but may very well turn on them as revenge for not supporting him after losing the CT primary. Lieberman is the sort of man people think of when they invoke a negative image of the politician: morally relativist, saying anything to get re-elected, corrupt and aloof. Joe's all those things and more. I think he's going to beat Lamont by at least 5 points on Tuesday, so here's hoping that the nominal Republican challenger can peel off some of that Republican support from Lieberman.
The House races are myriad, and I'm not going to predict exact numbers or comment on individual races. As others have noted, the sheer number of lawmakers involved in corruption or ethics scandals is enough to tip control of the House over to the Democrats. And that's even without the Iraq Civil War, without any of the sex scandals, without the general dark cloud that haunts the GOP today. Good riddance.
And the GOP is desperate too. All they have left is to childishly point to the Dems as the boogeyman and rattle off some incoherent claims about taxes and terrorists. Over in Tom Delay's district, the GOP has paid for some lawn signs which simply read, "Want more illegals? Vote Democrat" and "Encourage Terrorists. Vote Democrat." Its all they have left, folks. They have no plan for the future, they have lost interest (if they ever had it) in sustaining American greatness. Whatever the GOP has become, it is not conservative. It is reckless, greedy and ignorant. TPM reader DK puts it thusly:
I hope that when the political history of the last half century is written it will show, as it should, that the Republicans engaged in a brand of divisive electoral politics that pitted Americans against each other: white against black, men against women, rich against poor, native born against immigrant, straight against gay. Republicans deserve to be tarred by history for exploiting our weaknesses, our prejudices, and our lesser selves for their own political gain. But those are still our weaknesses and our prejudices. We own them. And it is our lesser selves that have succumbed to the Republican political pitch and been willing to be exploited. Removing the Republicans from power will only be a temporary fix unless we fundamentally fix ourselves so that no one, no party, no movement can exploit those same weaknesses again.
This is why I endorsed Obama a while back. He has the optimism (or at least projects it) that the country craves (For a parallel discussion on Obama that reaches a different conclusion, skim this). People have recognized the divisiveness, even if they can't trace it back to the politics of the GOP, and they want an end to it. Those that thrive on division aren't going anywhere, but they can be made a minority again. Democracy is supposed to require eternal vigilance and hopefully after the past quarter century of hard conservative politics Americans will be ready to take that responsibility seriously again.