<< Last Entry - Main Page - Next Entry >>

[05.26.03] A Party That Gets It It takes a real Clymer to offer a panoramic portrait of the GOP for the New York Times. Like much of the Times' political coverage, Clymer's article only skims the surface, which in this case works out fine because there's actually an abundance of material to draw from in documenting the party's rise from 1974 to today.
For me, the most striking fact the piece cites is that as of 2002 — for the first time in fifty years — the party controls a majority of the nation's state legislative seats. Ask Karl Rove, and he'll probably tell you this is the most impressive stat to emerge from the 2002 elections. The makeup of the statehouses, aggregating over 3,000 seats, is purest indicator you'll find of raw partisan strength in this country, and this chart shows the sure and steady upward movement since the nadir of Watergate.

If you were asking me to make the case for prolonged Republican dominance in the House, then the story in the state legislatures would surely be its linchpin. There's already talk of candidate recruitment going pretty poorly for the Dems and speculation about a possible GOP lock at least until the next redistricting cycle sets in in 2012. A deepening Republican talent pool in the State Houses and Senates is only going to make matters worse for the Democrats for the next decade and beyond.

Moreover, you've really got to wonder about the party's priorities when two of its marquee Southerners are willing to put their Senate seats in serious jeopardy in order to pursue White House bids that aren't catching on. The Democrats are putting all their eggs in one basket: the Presidency. It's unclear what they'll be left with if that doesn't work out quite as well as they'd hope.

In talking about the emerging conservative farm team, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this. This is just as important as anything that's going on in state and local government, because the resurgence of conservative activism on campus has the potential to stir up long-term political change 20 or 25 years down the road.

As a former CR chairman and campus conservative, I would like to state for the record that I never saw any of this D.C. foundation money they're talking about — about the most illicit loot we ever managed to get ahold of was cotton candy revenue from spring fling.

Permalink Comments (4) Pings (0) Donate Election Analysis

Gotta have something to run on - and abortion rights, segregation...errr...affirmative action and teachers unions does not a majority make.

Like Republicans in the 50's and 60's, the Democrats are about to take a spell of being only able to win by being a more palatable version of a GOPer to the electorate. Outside of the hothouses in the liberal ghettos, the Democrats are already being forced to sing a different tune from their national party (did you know that the Utah Dems are actually mostly pro-life? Imagine that!).

What this means is that they've lost the battle of ideas - the Democrats will be able to hang on to some power for a while because of inertia...but unless they start to brew some new ideas and, most importantly, purge their party of the far left, they will eventually fade away and some new party will pick up the center/left pieces and slowly forge a governing coalition as the GOP runs out of steam a couple decades hence.

Posted by: Mark Noonan at May 26, 2003 01:55:33 AM

It's a sad, sad day when I trust the Felier Faster Theory more than my own political alliegences to turn this country around. That day is today.

Posted by: SamAm at May 26, 2003 12:40:26 PM

Rather, the object of my political alliegences; the Democrats, aka Fucked Party 20XX.

Posted by: SamAm at May 26, 2003 01:04:00 PM

RE: The "farm team" piece you mentioned from the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/magazine/25REPUBLICANS.html

I helped found and was the first Director of the Institute for Conservative Studies at Florida State University in the late 80's. We were denied student agency status for quite some time, despite repeated student senate votes in our favor, but denied by the veto power of a far left vice-provost. He finally gave in when even liberal student groups began to talk about the lack of a conservative voice on campus. (We met with any groups opposed to our formation and won them over one at a time.) We never received one penny from any kind of outside organization and fought and received our agency status which gave us a budget in the 10's of thousands of dollars a year to bring in conservative speakers and hold debates and show films. Our first speaker was Adolfo Calero, the U.S. representative of the Nicaraguan Contras. The most recent speaker was Ann Coulter. The outside groups mentioned in the NYT piece are valuable resources, but students shouldn't just depend on them. We were able to access the same student activity funds at FSU that student women's groups, african-amercan groups, gay groups, basket weavers and pottery makers (the list goes on and on) received. While most conservative students don't like the idea of their activity funds being spent on things they disagree with, we decided to join them rather than fight them and now ICS is fully funded by the university. Sweet AND ironic. --scott

Posted by: Scott at May 27, 2003 03:01:41 PM

Post a comment

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Remember personal info? YesNo

Comments:

Y'all! MT hears you — just click once to see your comment posted.

Syndicate this Site: XML or RDF