Charlie Cook: House GOP Faces a Long March, Not a Sprint
Now I know how sportswriters feel during the bye week between the NFL's Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. After a while you get tired of the hype and looking for the fresh angle on what's to come. Can we just cut the crap and play the game?
I'm having similar thoughts while waiting for the inauguration. Let's get the game going.
This is a fairly even handed analysis by Charlie Cook of what Republicans need to do in the next two years to start to gain seats in the Congress in 2010. Quoting from the article, "To a certain extent, partisan politics in this country is binary. If one party is a 1, the other is a zero. When the former party squanders its political capital, it becomes a zero and the latter party becomes a 1. Like a children's see-saw, if one party moves up, the other party goes down."
I like that quote because it speaks to the reality of the duopoly we have in our politics. Once again, this is why we need Instant Runoff Voting. IRV will let us break up that duopoly.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/offtotheraces.php
I'm having similar thoughts while waiting for the inauguration. Let's get the game going.
This is a fairly even handed analysis by Charlie Cook of what Republicans need to do in the next two years to start to gain seats in the Congress in 2010. Quoting from the article, "To a certain extent, partisan politics in this country is binary. If one party is a 1, the other is a zero. When the former party squanders its political capital, it becomes a zero and the latter party becomes a 1. Like a children's see-saw, if one party moves up, the other party goes down."
I like that quote because it speaks to the reality of the duopoly we have in our politics. Once again, this is why we need Instant Runoff Voting. IRV will let us break up that duopoly.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/offtotheraces.php
Larry,
I know that discussion of the demise of the GOP is a popular topic in the left-wing press.
As we look ahead to elections in 2010 and 2012, insightful analysts will understand that the GOP is not really the pertinent issue.
The real question is whether the Democrats can keep from screwing up. Implicit in that would be Congress building credibility by actually doing things that make sense to the majority of Americans and our new President surviving the transition from campaign promises to governing reality.
Here is one view.
http://www.patriotpost.us/opinion/jonah-goldberg/2009/01/11/obama-and-the-democratic-brand.html
'Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.'
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Jim,
Thanks for a fairly even handed analysis piece from a source I usually don't find as such (The Patriot Post).
The media likes to regurgitate what they see as the conventional wisdom and perhaps miss out on what's really the issue. If that conventional wisdom favors "liberals" (whatever the hell that means) then the media is described as liberal. Same thing applies in reverse if conventional wisdom favors the so called "conservatives".
Case in point from a neutral standpoint is last night's game between the Cardinals and the Panthers. Conventional wisdom said the Cardinals had poor defense and couldn't play in the Eastern Time Zone and there was no way the Cardinals could defeat the Panthers. The reality last night was the Cardinals intercepted the Panthers 6 times and whipped the Panthers. (By the way, my condolences to Giants, Titans, and Panther fans. I've had the blowing home field advantage blues, too.)
If you'll go back to my book as well as what I've written many times in this Blog, I think you'll find I am advocating we learn to describe what we want from government in terms of outcomes and quit framing our arguments in terms of liberal vs. conservative.
You'll also see I have been saying what Goldberg is saying since before the election. The challenge the Democrats have is not to let the political pendulum swing back to the left too far and too fast or they'll pay for it in 2010.
I'm also saying to help prevent that we need Instant Runoff Voting to provide us competitive alternatives. Otherwise we're forced to go back to Republicans and the same screwed up philosophy we fired them over in 2006 and 2008. Without a competttive third party, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats has any reason to change how they do business.
Thanks again for sending. Good article.
Larry
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