Lieberman

A member of a political party in a ruling system is more or less expected to maintain a certain ideological purity. After all, these people advance to power on the backs of others. Or more accurately on their hands, minds and feet as the party workers strive with long hours to implant their candidates in power.

This of course creates a certain obligation in return, the obligation to support the party.

In this aspect, Sen. Lieberman seems to have a serious issue.

There is one thing you don't do in politics, you don't turn your back on the party, and by extension the people that helped elect you. As Chris Mathews sums up in his book Hardball: You dance with the ones that brung 'ya.

Mathews offers some interesting examples as well, how loyalty is won in Washington ("he was the kind of man that switched teams without giving away the signals" was one example of high praise) and how it is lost.

Lieberman perhaps committed the greatest political sin of all, he not only broke with the party, he tossed a grenade into his own party's trenches. His essay in the Wall Street Journal, which came from a speech delivered for a neoconservative event no less (Salon, P1) was an unabashed attack on his own party.

He even took the conservatives own terms, their own weaponry, casting the democratic party as un-American and unpatriotic, echoing the worst of the Bush-era neoconservative Zoroastrianism.

But you have to ask what it's all for? Is he trying to woo conservative voters? after the last election you have to wonder if there are any left... is he aiming for a split in the party between left-wing antiwar liberals and moderate social liberals?

Lieberman broke with his own party to endorse McCain. This is not unheard of, some charismatic conservatives have garnered support from moderate liberals. Notably the Regan Democrats of '80 and '84, chaired by another example from hardball, Connolly, who earned derision for masquerading as a democrat.

But in the case of Regan Democrats most were the average Joe (no pun intended), not elected federal legislators. No one cares who the grocery bagger at Copps is voting for, he can switch loyalties and party identification any day of the week; but for a man who has advanced his career on the work of others in the party, such a betrayal is not as easily forgotten.

RIP GOP?

After their stunning defeat in two consecutive elections, costing them majorities in the senate and house, and also the presidency, some liberal commentators are already hailing the death of the Republican Party. But is it too soon to put on the toe tag? I think the answer is, unfortunately, 'yes and no'.

I think the results of the last two elections are indicative more of 'running against hoover' than of a serious long-term downturn in the party. The economy was bad, that doesn't bode well for the party in power. Bush had critically low approval ratings, yes it's true, but so did Carter, and while it took a while for the US to get in a democratic mood again, it did come back around full circle. One cynical blog post I read described the cycle as such: "This sucks, elect a democratic congress. This is working, elect a democratic president! This sucks again, elect a republican congress! This is working, elect a republican president!..." and so on sinusoidally forever. Bad economies bode poorly for the president's party, simple as that.

On the other hand, I do think that this does show the failure of the neoconservative agenda. Americans, in fact I'd venture all voters, vote behind their pocketbooks more than on moral issues. When the economy is poor, Americans vote for who they think can restore it, while you may pick up some single-issue voters, face it, single-issue voters on neocon whipping horses like abortion and gay rights are never going to vote democrat anyway, you don't need to convince them of anything.
The republicans were the party that owned economic issues, by continually stumping on budget reform and economic reforms. They appear to have lost their central credibility on the economy. Perhaps this dates as far back as Regan and the specter of voodoonomics is catching up to the Grand Old Party, maybe they've just squandered their credibility in corporate scandals, but I think that's a transient problem indicative of the current mode of conservative discussion: Their party will continue to alienate so long as they force social issues over practical ones, and let themselves be hamstrung by scandal and perceived corporate ties, but I don't think that's the death of the traditional conservative ideology.
After all conservitivism is much more than neoconservativsm and the party is much more than Bush: what the GOP needs is a strong, charismatic leader that doesn't run on specters of fear, but rather the bulwarks of conservative philosophy that I think the average american can get behind. Talk to my friends, even the most liberal ones, and some of them start sounding very conservative at times, talking about responsible government, lower deficits, business incentives, the end of porkbarrel boondoggles and the return of the expectation of morality to politicians. The problem is the Republican party seems to have lost sight of those values that made it attractive to voters, if they ever find them again, I wouldn't count them out of the running. If they don't find them: R.I.P. G O P.

election

Wow, what an election, still came down to a within-error-of-margin squeaker in the popular vote, but it's nice to see a little harmony for a change.
Honestly given the last two elections I expected a hardscrabble fight to the last bitter moment.

Makes me happy that the margin was really too far to be litigated away.

I expected it to go until 4am

it was over, practically, by 8:30 central when Obama hit 206 electoral votes and you could count of California Oregon and Washington to put him over the 270 mark and into the white house.

It was almost... anticlimactic. The Bush administration and eight long years of neoconservative domination died in, well from 6am to 8:30pm. Not that McCain was a neocon anyway, not a Bush-style one beholden only to the radical party fringe. That itself says something to.

A lot of pundits are going over McCain's performance with a fine-toothed come, looking for the moment it went wrong. Some say it was choosing Palin, which took experience off the issue and, in CNN's words "made voters question his judgement." Some point to wall street deciding to spontaneously and utterly lose their collective sh*t a month before the election. But in the end, it's one lone bullet point that did it. Bush. Distance from Bush, support of bush, accepting endorsement from Bush.

He screwed the pooch so badly his party was in an untenable position. Nothing associated with the Republicans could do well this year, not in the house, not in the senate, not for the white house, not govenors, heck, I think it'd be tough to get elected as a republican mayor of a small town.

in 2000 and even 2004 it's arguable whether Bush actually won, let alone if he had a clear mandate to act. But here, as fractitious as politics are a close popular vote doesn't tell the tale as much as the electoral does. And obama won almost than three fourths of the country. Whether it was a vote against Bush or against McCain or a vote for Obama the message was pretty clear: Americans want change now.