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(Note: This is not intended as a screed against any particular consitituency in our party. The descriptors that I'll use are taken from common usage and don't necessarily reflect my own views of one group or another. PLEASE ... consider the concepts and not the adjectives.)
What I see, rather than a conservative drift, is a return to our broader base. True enough, some of our 2006 freshman class are pretty conservative. Or are they? Maybe what we're seeing is the return of prodigal children. The working class northeasterners who were, at the time, in favor of the Viet Nam war. And the Reagan Democrats who went on to become Republicans. In particular, the northeastern working class and their progeny seem to have come back strongly to our side and have created, for the first time in a long time, a virtually monolithic block of blue from Maine to Illinois to Virginia, and even a bit further at the margins.
To be sure, some people evolve politically. But many, perhaps most, feel whatever it is they feel and choose a party based on affinity to those feelings they feel.
The Democrats have always been the majority party, at least back to the days of FDR. And over that time, we've had our share of conservative leaners. Scoop Jackson comes immediately to mind.
In recent years, the party has entertained some pretty left-leaning people. As the Republicans moved right, many on our side moved further left. Add to that our attraction to formerly out of step far lefties who became Democrats - or at least supporters of the Democratic Party and its candidates. Given our loss of power starting in 1994 - and the loss of an honest media at about the same time - and it was easy to paint us as out of step. All that was made the focus of the common wisdom and the media were the more fringe elements of the party. And it was an easy next step to tie any of our headliners to this meme.
In other words, it was more perception than reality. But with a media hellbent to make perception the actual reality, it soon was. The louder our counterbalance at the leftmost edge of our party (and thank you for that counterbalance!) became, and the less we had any real power, the easier it was to paint the entire party as a bunch of out of step left wing extremists.
It seems to me that, as they always do, the Republicans, with near-dictatorial control of all the levers of power including the Fourth Estate, over reached. They sold out their core principles for the glory of winning. And they did it again and again and again.
And finally, those who left us so many years ago see how they were mistaken .... and just plain taken.
The country was ready for this change. We're now the clear majority party. Our appeal is broad. Our newly minted legislators will be in the Congress representing their constituents. Constituents who left us when we drifted to far left, not as the Republicans drifted to the right.
Over the years (and for me that is about to enter its 7th decade) I've been a Republican and Democrat. My last brush with the Republicans was as a Reagan voter. So I'm seeing this from both sides. As a youth, growing up in a house where FDR and JFK were right next to God, I was always socially liberal. In my younger adulthood, I joined the 'me first' crowd. As an older man, I am now more liberal than I was even in my youth. So I put myself in that group of people who evolve over time. But many (most?) of the people I know of about the same age as me are still pretty much who they were way back in the day. And it is exactly them - and those who they directly influence as our nations more senior people - who are now coming back. That witch's brew of neconservatism and war coupled with the unholy religious right, and added to with a dash of profligate spending showed them so very clearly that the Republican Party has gone too far right.
In many, many ways, the Republican Party today is where the Democratic Party of the late 60s through the 90s was. Moving further and further to its more extreme edges even as the Democratic Party is moving in a direction that appeals to its wider natural base. They are fast becoming the 'radical party' that appeals only at the extremes.
And that's not where the people are.
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