For today’s G.O.P. is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan — not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the antigovernment fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. It’s a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans’ economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It’s a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side — Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions — are mainstream. And, as a result, it’s a party that fundamentally doesn’t accept anyone else’s right to govern.Krugman seems to hope that the Republicans will find a way to walk back from the end of the limb they've climbed out on. I don't think so. I think they are well on their way to extinction as a major political party. Instead, I expect a fission within the Democratic party will create the future two-party system for the US.
In the short run, Republican extremism may be good for Democrats, to the extent that it prompts a voter backlash. But in the long run, it’s a very bad thing for America. We need to have two reasonable, rational parties in this country. And right now we don’t.
Friday, March 26, 2010
American Extremism
Paul Krugman has another thoughtful op-ed in the NY Times. Here's the concluding two paragraphs:
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3 comments:
I'm wondering (kind of as I write) who will make up the two parties. Obviously progressives would be one side.... Conservative Democrats on the other? I can see what you are saying happening soon, though.
Yes... I'm thinking that the urban/rural divide, the pregressive/centrist divide, the social activist/more traditionalist divide would grow and let the Democrats split into two parties. That would give the US a healthier two party system than the current dysfunctional Democrat/Republican divide.
The situation right now has the Republicans refusing to act as a party. They have no platform and no positive agenda on which they are prepared to act. For nearly 30 years the Republicans has sold themselves as the party that wants to get rid of government. That's like hiring a Hollywood porn producer as a marriage counsellor. The Republicans as a "political party" make no sense. As a front for lobbyists the Republican "party" make sense. But as a party to represent citizens in need of a government, they make no sense.
I have no real basis for expecting the split or the imminent demise of the Republicans. It is mostly just a hope I have. If this could happen, the US would be on sounder footing as a country and more likely to govern itself effectively.
I am hoping that you and I are right about it too. I just know that it would probably be the same faces, but a party with a platform and a different name. There would still be the conservatives and the moderates or I guess I should say both ends of the spectrum and everything in between, but now that I think about it that would be a welcome change from today's party, too. At least the Democrats have differing points of view and philosophies which at the same time is a challenge within the party at times.
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