You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting a media member or political pundit proudly declaring that the demise of the Republican Party is at hand.
The most recent eulogy came from Democrat strategist James Carville who’s just written a new book called “40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.”
As evidenced by the title, the former Clinton advisor is channeling the current conventional wisdom that Republicans are the not-so-Grand-but-very-Old-angry-white- male Party that no longer represents the changing face of a younger, more multicultural America increasingly dominated by liberal, feminist views.
Of course, this greatly deviates from the post-2004 elections conventional wisdom that Democrats had forsaken those interested in traditional family values and strong national security, as they continued to foolishly treat baby boomers as hippies sitting on beanbag chairs in pot smoke-filled dorm rooms preparing for the next anti-war rally.
Who can blame such an assessment given the historic nature of that election representing the first time since 1936 a sitting president was sent back to the White House as his party increased majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Although a distant memory now, the post mortems at the time included Carville-like predictions by folks, including myself, that 2004 was a political realignment that could result in Republican domination at the polls for years to come.
As Democrats took back Congress and the White House in the next two election cycles, it seems people from this point forward are probably making long-term political predictions at their own risk.
Such caution seems particularly warranted given Gallup’s absolutely shocking May 15 poll finding that for the first time since it began asking such a question back in 1995, a majority of Americans now consider themselves pro-life.
This confirmed similar findings by the Pew Research Center a few weeks prior, as well as information from the same study that for the first time in this organization’s history, one of its polls identified almost as many Americans believing it’s more important to protect gun rights than enact stricter laws controlling such.
Meanwhile, Rasmussen Reports recently identified three consecutive weeks when more people supported unnamed Republicans than Democrats in next year’s congressional elections. This is only the fourth time in more than five years of Rasmussen polling that the GOP has held such a lead.
Even more shocking, CNN/Opinion Research Corporation reported on May 21 that Dick Cheney’s favorability rating has increased eight points since he left office in January, while George W. Bush’s is up six points.
Hours later, CBS’s Bob Schieffer, commenting on the “Early Show” about the previous day’s much publicized sparring between Cheney and Obama, said the former Vice President is winning the debate on national security and enhanced interrogation techniques.
This came just days after California, a state which often starts political trends in the nation, overwhelmingly rejected ballot initiatives that would have increased taxes to pay for exploding budget deficits.
Finally, a USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday found Americans by more than 2-1 don’t want the detention center at Guantanamo Bay closed, and by more than 3-1 oppose moving detainees to prisons in their own states.
Respondents also overwhelmingly sided with the views of Bush and Cheney that the detention center made the United States safer with 40 percent saying the prison strengthened national security versus only 18 percent believing the opposite was true.
Add it all up, and America seems to be responding to the leftward shift in Washington much as they did the last time Democrats controlled Congress and the White House.
For those that have forgotten, voters could only stand two years of unrestrained Clintons before they handed the GOP a surprising victory in November 1994, control of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades.
With this in mind, if people continue to respond to Obama’s actions by becoming more and more conservative, Republicans will be well-served by ignoring the eulogies coming from those who don’t have the party’s best interests at heart and quickly make as hard a right turn as their steering wheels will allow.
Noel Sheppard is associate editor of the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.org.
