Democrats' Election Victory Looks Bigger All the Time
Neocon John Podhoretz cites an eye-popping body of evidence to support the claim that we are witnessing the last dying gasps of the Republican Party.
Citing the conservative Realclearpolitics.com, Podhoretz moans -- on the pages of the rightwing New York Post -- that from 2004 to 2006, "the GOP's share of the vote fell an astonishing 10 percentage points."
While we haven't checked the validity of the neocons' numbers, we happily recall that for neocons, perception is everything.
Remember that coming progressive era we keep talking about? It looks closer all the time!
PRESIDENT Bush contributed a new word to the political lexicon when he called the GOP defeat on Election Day a "thumpin'." Now, two weeks after the election, the full nature of the "thumpin' " is coming through pretty clearly - and it's devastating news for Republicans and conservatives and even more disastrous for Bush.
According to vote-cruncher Jay Cost of Realclearpolitics.com, 54 percent of the ballots in open races were cast for Democrats and 46 percent for Republicans. Between 2004 and '06, the GOP's share of the vote fell an astonishing 10 percentage points.
Cost puts it like this: "Republicans should thus count themselves very lucky. With this kind of vote share prior to 1994, the Democrats would have an 81-member majority, as opposed to the 29-member majority they now enjoy." Only certain structural changes in U.S. politics since 1990 prevented that mega-thumpin'. That is, Republicans in the House were spared a decimation of their ranks by forces beyond their control.
But those forces aren't beyond Democratic control - which should panic Republican politicians. Many of the structural changes that saved them this time can be undone, especially after the census of 2010 leads to new congressional maps - which it appears will be supervised in a majority of the states by legislatures controlled by Dems. . .
There's no good news whatever for Republicans in the exit polls or anywhere else. The talk that they suffered at the polls this time because GOP voters were disenchanted by the party? Nonsense: By all accounts, more than 90 percent of Republican voters cast their ballot for GOP candidates, and turnout was high. GOP voters didn't revolt against the Republican Party. Independent and conservative Democrats did.
Politics Election 2006 GOP Exit Polls Bush 2006 Republicans News Democrats Progressive Era
