The shrinking Republican base
This morning on Diane Rehm’s NPR radio show, Norman Ornstein with the American Enterprise Institute said something very interesting:
“The Republican Party is on the cusp of losing an entire generation.”
I must admit that this hadn’t occurred to me, but as soon as he said it, I saw it.
The Republican Party is on the cusp of losing an entire generation, in nearly exactly the same way that the Democrats lost an entire generation back in 1980 with the advent of the so-called “Reagan Revolution.”
Back in 1980, it seemed unthinkable that anything could stop the Democrats. Just four years earlier, in the aftermath of Nixon’s Watergate, the Republicans were on the verge of extinction. In fact, about six months or so after Nixon’s resignation, the Republicans were held in such low esteem, that in desperation the GOP ran a half-hour infomercial, Republicans Are People Too, hosted by Chuck Connors, in an attempt to reform the party’s image.
It seemed, back in those days, that the Republicans wouldn’t bother us again for a long, long time.
Then came 1980 and Reagan’s promise that it was “morning in America.”
And the unthinkable happened. Generation X, the generation that followed the Boomers, who were already exhibiting a degree of materialism that was unthinkable only a few years earlier, swallowed the Reagan line, hook and sinker. Suddenly the college campuses, the birthplace of the American Cultural Revolution, were filled with Reaganites - even prompting The Kinks to observe on the State of Confusion album that “…the schools and universities; Are turning out a brand new breed of young conservatives.”
Well, this morning Ornstein implied that the “Reagan Revolution,” after 28 years, might finally be coming to an end.
Except for abortion, all of the Republicans wedge issues are gone. The kids that are now voting for the first time are not afraid of gay rights or the notion of gay marriage. Nor is school prayer an issue with them. And, as the support that Obama receives on our universities proves, this young crowd ain’t afraid of people who may be darker skinned than the status quo (which, I assume, must apply to gender issues as well).
So now I have a new mantra - a positive affirmation that I will repeat every morning upon awakening:
“The Republican Party is on the cusp of losing an entire generation.”
As we like to say - happy days are here again!
Cross posted on If This Be Treason
- Christine Hall's blog
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Here's hoping.
A decade of high-voltage divisiveness, incompetence, lying and stone-age science may be finally taking its toll.
Stone age science
Did anyone else catch Al Gore's last night on the teevee?
He very gently and diplomatically as possible suggested that people who refuse to accept that human activity is causing global warming (Republicans) are scientifically in the same category as people who think the earth is flat.
Ha!! I cracked up.
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." - Harry Truman
You are right on about all the "wannabe" Republicans...
who thought they would be like Reagan and Bush. They didn't want to waste time picketing or demonstrating for their jobs or safety issues. That was for the old guys(like me)! They saw globalization as the new utopia promised by the billionaires. The only problem being the billionaires weren't planning on the peasants. So now the younger generations face the 1940s all over again. And that does entail getting down and dirty with these corporation types. Take it from one who knows what picket lines are about, and being targetted by the media as the bad guys. And it also means having 'real' friends in Washington DC, to go to bat for the people of the USA, and not China, etc.