The Republicans got elected, IMHO, because of perceived weakness on security issues rather than because the People voted for their so-called social values.  The Cold War was a scary time.  Vietnam was looked upon as a Democratic failure even though in the end Nixon botched it. 

The Country, even then, was not majority bible-beater.  Christian maybe, but fundie, no.  However when a confluence of failed war policy and failed economic policy showed the Rethugs for what they are a big Democratic majority was inevitable.  We now face a difficult road.  We have to keep our core values and keep the majority who describe themselves as independents in our column.  If anybody can do it, BHO can.

Is that a Tasmanian Devil?

They’re upset because they think the WH is rightfully theirs. That’s why they went after Clinton like a pack of rabid dogs. They were cheated out of the WH because Perot took enough votes away from GHWB for Clinton to win. (In their view, anyway. Not sure if that holds up statistically.)

In any case, as Amanda noted, Obama’s victory was so decisive that they can’t even console themselves with any “we wuz robbed” thoughts. Which is why they’re basically strangling on their own bile.

The Republicans are freaked out. I just got an email forwarded to me with a two hour video about how Obama is going to try to rule the world. It’s a cobbled-together, taken-out-of-context mish mash of clips and videos of Obama and his administrators, all set to militaristic scary music and narrated by someone with a threatening voice. In other words, it’s preposterous propaganda. The fact that a friend sent it to me is even more horrific, because if she thinks I’m with her on this type of crap, then our friendship needs some serious re-evaluation.

Look at where they are attacking him: his use of teleprompters and his failure to fix the economy. It makes no sense whatsoever. And in the same moment calling him boring AND hot-tempered. WHA?

I hope they continue to flounder about, but I have a feeling that one or another of them will put something together that draws a bigger crowd than the teabaggers and then there’ll be one more thing Obama has to deal with. Let’s hope they just end up shooting themselves in the foot again.

Exactly, Bitter.  The Clinton years, the right wing consolidated a lot of power as an opposition party, and they were able to parlay that into a stranglehold on DC that was only just overcome.  It’s fascinating that they are actually unnerved instead of just regrouping to do it again.

Is that a Tasmanian Devil?

Why yes, I do believe it is.  Cute little thing, even with the teeth and all (I’ll forego any attempt at nuzzling).

This situation is similar to that of the Maronite Christians in Lebanon and the Sunnis in Iraq. For years they harbored fantasies that they were the majority and thus they had the exclusive right to be in charge. And when the reality made it clear that this wasn’t the case, the situation spun out of control.

I’m not drawing an exact parallel—I doubt we’ll descend into civil war—but it’s going to be a generation before the Republicans adjust to a new reality.

The punchbowl turd that is the Republican “budget” (an <strike>8th Grade</strike> 6th Grade-level PowerPoint joke in response to Obama’s challenge) is a great indication of just how bad things are.

In the past, that kind of worthless attempt at derailing our dialog on the economy would have worked.  Now it just makes them look like the cynical collection of used car salesmen they really are…

but they also went the extra mile and convinced a lot of people that Obama is a Muslim (indistinguishable from “terrorist” in the paranoid mind), a socialist (which most people don’t even understand), and that he thinks abortions in the third trimester are just great.

Actually, I think their problem is that they failed to convince a lot of people of these things, at least not a lot of people proportional to the number of life long republicans of the reasonable persuasion that got flat out turned off by it.  I know people who are classic “rock ribbed” conservatives that grabbed this last straw and punched the ballot for Obama.

Remember that these were the guys who treated as a foregone conclusion the “Permanent Republican Majority”.  Now that this particular illusion has not only been broken but annihilated after a mere two election cycles, they’re left to do naught but stumble about like a losing prizefighter trying to figure out what hit them.

It’s fun to watch, but worth bearing in mind that they’ll find their feet eventually.

It is a Tasmanian Devil.  A combination of lack of caffeine and frustration with the current state of politics is making me a tad dada in my image choices.  The pizza slice in the post below, by the way, is a visual pun.

That’s quite likely, Ms Kate.  I’d be interested if they polled Obama voters to see how many of the ones who pulled the lever for him thought he was Muslim.  That would be a good measure of whether or not people overcame prejudice or were woken up to reality.

Did you link to that poor guy b/c no one had commented on any of his posts?  Poor widdle racist, blogging alone in teh wilderness…

Can I believe this man is my President?  Why, yes I can!

My guess is that the Republicans are gambling hard on Democratic failure.  This isn’t just because of the utter bankruptcy of their own ideas; they are also guessing that the Democrats don’t have the will or the ability to attempt the systemic changes that are necessary to stave off disaster.  The Democrats have been pushing (maybe pushing is too forceful a word) a we’re-not-as-bad-as-Republicans agenda for years now, and after several years of Dubya that was enough to get them the White House and majorities in both houses Congress.  But if they don’t make a genuine and very public show of casting aside their reflexive pro-corporate proclivities, the Democrats are going to shitcan themselves right along with the Republicans.  If people don’t see that their bread-and-butter issues (health care, economy, etc.) are being dealt with aggressively, they’ll be more prone to fall back on anger, spite, and culture war politics.  There will be a larger and more receptive audience for the transparent bullshit the GOP is selling.

(By the way, I got that from a blogger that just puts up pictures of Obama and asks if you can believe that guy is President.  I fail to understand his point, because Obama dresses and conducts himself like I’d imagine a President should. Unless he’s just race-baiting, which I’m forced to assume that’s what he’s doing.)

I have to admit, sometimes I’m afraid that all of this is a dream and McCain actually won, because I can hardly believe that the US had enough of a sense of self-preservation to elect the smartest, most prepared guy instead of the bad-tempered warmonger.  So, yes, sometimes I can hardly believe that Obama is President myself.

It is a Tasmanian Devil.  A combination of lack of caffeine and frustration with the current state of politics is making me a tad dada in my image choices.

It is a perfect choice, and an apt metaphor: like teh republicans, the Tazmanian Devil is batshit fierce, but confined to it’s own eponymous island, limited to increasingly small habitats, and highly endangered.

The pizza slice in the post below, by the way, is a visual pun.

Yeah, well maybe, but now I have to think about girl parts AND pizza all morning.  Curse you. 

I’ve been watching the panic amongst my Republican relations with some degree of Schadenfreude…they are absoutely rock-bottom convinced that we’re going to be Communist within two years.  Obama’s gonna take their guns away (WOLVERINES!)  Obama’s gonna make everyone have gay marriage lesbian abortions.  Obama’s going to personally show up at everyone’s house and take away the Bibles and replace them with Korans.

The Republicans have been living in a constructed reality where everyone in the U.S. is white, middle class, has 2.5 children and 2 SUVs, and belongs to a “proper” Church.  This constructed reality only allows for people not in that framework to be the enemy…and the obvious electoral victory of Obama has shattered their reality to the point where nothing but Chaos and the incipient End Times will rescue it.

Sometimes I also look at a picture of Obama and think, “Can you believe this guy is our president?”  Only I’m grinning at the time, and generally feeling like I did when I finally got an electric race track for Christmas.  Except way more.

Where does the “take away our guns” meme come from? Has any Democratic politician at the national level ever suggested confiscation of firearms, as opposed to limiting what can be purchased?

It probably sounds hokey but I have to believe it’s the internet’s doing.

The major thing I’ve noticed about the Republican’s fantastically idiotic nonsense is that it’s no different from the fantastically idiotic nonsense that they’ve flogged for the last 30 years. This “budget proposal” shit-sandwich they just squeezed out is the exact same thing they would have done in 1993, only nobody would have been able to read the thing and we’d have got two weeks of headlines reading “Republicans Boldly Challenge Clinton’s Budget - Boldly!” and “Republican Budget: Cuts Taxes, Spends Less, and Turns Shitpiles Into Ponies”. Whereas now it seems like we have a critical mass of people who can get their hands on the thing themselves and see how motherloving stupid it is so the cheap theatrics don’t quite fly like they used to.

Viceroy, the belief stems from gun registration laws and cracking down on attempts to get around them (such as gun shows).  The assumption is that if we know who has guns, the next step is to take them all away.  They can’t conceive of any other reason to be concerned about who has guns, such as trying to match a firearm to a person should it be used to murder someone.

(I suspect it will rear its ugly head again, and the Republicans will be on hand to reap the benefits.  Let’s hope they’re too discombobulated to seize that opportunity when it arises.)

I’m generally a pessimist, but I believe that it will be easy enough for the party of Limbaugh to reap the benefits of a national mood shift, should one occur, towards isolationism and insularity.  There’s no deep thought behind, “there’s a black guy/liberal/radical feminist, GET HIM!”—it’s mob mentality pure and simple.  I am myself surprised that our country got its collective shit together long enough to make a sensible choice for president, but modern American culture ain’t known for its patience.

Basically, I am hopeful that Republican’s core strategy of Spite & Hate has been put down for the count, but I’m not naive enough to think that we can’t backslide if things get too bad.

Not only that, Ms. Kate, except for the last mentioned bit, reminds me of Doughy Pantload:

When the young are born, competition is fierce as they move from the vagina to the pouch. Once inside the pouch, they each remain attached to a nipple for the next 100 days. The female Tasmanian Devil’s pouch, like that of the wombat, opens to the rear, so it is physically difficult for the female to interact with young inside the pouch. Despite the large litter at birth, the female has only four nipples, so there are never more than four babies nursing in the pouch; and the older a female devil gets, the smaller her litters will become.[7] On average, more females survive than males.[9]

I said it in the thread below about Mr. Burger Hero and I’ll repeat it here - my retired on-Social-Security sick-but-don’t-have-health-insurance in-laws are PANICKING about Obama taking their guns away; this is, of course, at the same time that the husbands of two of their daughters have lost their jobs in this crappy economy and they live in an economically disastrous area of California.

Seriously.  They’re obsessing about gun control to the point where the suggestion of reimposing the assault weapons ban has them planning an insurrection against the Federal Goverment (WOLVERINES!).

They have an elaborate domino theory where the DemoCommunists take away guns, then impose a 90% tax rate, take away Bibles, sell children into homosexual slavery, and finally declare the United States to be an Islamic-Bolshevik country.

I wish I wasn’t being entirely serious here.

I occasionally click over to RedState or The Next Right, and the view over there usually is that the Republican Party lost its way by being insufficiently antitax and anti-spending, and if it puts the Reagan constume back on it’ll do great.

I think that’s a fairly influential view inside the House GOP caucus as well.  You are what you eat, and Mike Pence has been eating that bullshit all his life.  You fool people with propaganda, and a generation later those people are your Congressional leadership.

I hate being cynical, and this is a good read, but I was actually talking about the election last night with some folks, and we were commenting on how nice it is to have a president who was actually intelligent and thoughtful for a change, and wondering how in the hell Bush ever got elected in the first place (SCOTUS, I realize, but as someone pointed out, that race should never have been even close enough for it to go to SCOTUS).

Anyway, one of my friends, who is black, made the observation that while he was extremely happy that Obama won, he believed it only happened because George W. Bush was SUCH a massive fuck-up that the country was willing to vote for the black guy in spite of his race - that had Bush left office with approval/disapproval ratings near the 50-50 mark, there was no chance in hell Obama would have won.  Basically that no matter who McCain’s opponent was, he had no shot in hell of becoming POTUS given the national animosity towards Bush and the GOP.

Anyway, we all kind of chuckled about it in a cynical way, and someone mentioned The Onion headline the day after the election: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job”.

While it’s accepted that The Onion is entirely satirical in nature, the lede paragraph for that story was pretty spot-on:

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, “It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.”

Anyway, the bigger point is that while I do think America is becoming much more of a center-left country than a center-right one, and while I do believe we weren’t just rejecting Bush and the GOP for the failures of their policies they enacted but also for many of their ideas, I remain cautiously optimistic.  The Iraq War largely paved the road for the Democrats to retake Congress in 2006.  Bush and the GOP’s defiance and incompetence following that election year paved the way for an even bigger victory in 2008, taking back the White House and greatly strengthening Democratic representation in Congress.

But now the real test comes - the 2010 Midterm elections.  True believer wingnuts are convinced that Obama and the current Congress first 2 years are gonna be so bad that they’ll have a repeat of 1994.  I personally don’t think that’s gonna happen, but I do worry about the “conservadems” like Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu fucking things up by pandering too hard to the wingers and voting down good progressive legislation, and in turn giving the GOP some points.  Clinton’s biggest mistake in his first year in office was easily “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” - and while I think his intentions were good from the get-go - he wanted to figuree out how to craft policy that would tolerate gays in the military - he let the bill get away from him because of assholes like Democratic Senator Sam Nunn revising the bill to include the “Don’t Tell” portion.  In the end he signed a law that pissed off both conservatives and progressives - the right was pissed because he was actually acknowledging gays’ right to serve, and the left was pissed because it was essentially a “Seperate But Equal” slap in the face.

Anyway, 2010 is where it’s at.  This will be the first time since 1994 in which Democrats will enter an election year in control of both the White House and Congress.  Which means that ultimately, the election is a referendum on our party - the policies our politicians have crafted, and the plans they have.

If we can walk away from 2010 holding onto our majorities, or better yet, increasing them in size, then I’ll feel really optimistic that America isn’t just rejecting the recent failures of the GOP, but actually embracing the agenda of the Democrats.  I do have some optimism in that regard already, but as you pointed out in the start of your piece - Carter won because of Nixon, Clinton won because the right was split - but if we’re being totally honest, we have to admit that Obama won at least in part because of Bush’s failures.

Oh, I see Dark Avenger: it’s okay in republican land if the babies die fighting for resources, because they are already born.

Dan, I think you’re completely right about how the internet has created a more informed citizenry.

“Oh, I see Dark Avenger: it’s okay in republican land if the babies die fighting for resources, because they are already born.”

It’s what Dagney Taggart, er, Ayn Rand would have wanted…

The big difference between now and then is the internet—and blogs like this one.

I still remember the sense of total isolation in 2003, like I’d fallen down a rabbit hole.  The Traditional Media flat-out refused to contest Bush’s obvious lies and misdirections, even going so far as to suppress milllion-person marches and Congressional debate.  I was utterly bewildered and enraged, lost. 

And then the left blogosphere, and while I was still enraged, I no longer believed I was alone.  I knew there were others like me and that the facts, whatever they were, could be gotten out to at least some people.

Atrios is right that the Traditional Media is just as willing as they used to be to propagate the BS; what they are not is just as able.  We live in a world in which the primary sources are just plain available, and people now expect to see them.  When I read an article about a speech or debate, I expect a transcript.  You saw the evolution process on TIME’s Swampland blog.  Joe Klein would post utterly moronic post after post, and in every single one, there would be a hundred just brutal responses, all strongly factually supported, all dismissive and condemnatory.  Joe would show up over and over in the comments section to defend himself, increasingly defensive, and he would just get clobbered again.  Joe would show up at events, and the folks there who were familiar with the blog would mock him.

There are two really amazing results from this.  The first is that it took about six months of this for things to get better.  The second is that things actually got better.  Klein’s reportage and punditry actually improved.  It turned out that he just had never had any kind of serious feedback from people who cared about what the truth was, so he just wrote whatever rightwing BS fell into his head.  He started factchecking.  He started not assuming that his life was the average American’s life.

They were always this incompetent and ridiculous.  But there used to be a grand conspiracy of silence among our news gatekeepers, and that’s begun to collapse under the weight of Youtube.

The resident talkative wingnut at the office kept predicting nazism and slavery if Obama won. Now he is still here and - if asked, thankfully! - will gladly repeat his predictions of world end but is he moving ? Nope. Going Galt ? Nope.

He has a young daughter so you would think that if he really believed all the BS he talks he would be trying to protect her and get out of “Nazi Socialist America”: before they force marry his 4 year old to a muslin homo elitist lib’ral. He isn’t.

I think to him and many of GOPpies this is just a game. Like writers of supermarket tabloids they know what they write / say is BS. They do it for the money and attention they get for writing it.

Pesto, I think you just gave me an epiphany. 

Republicans gripe and whine about what they call “identity politics” on the left.  I only just realized that this is because, like in so many other areas, they are projecting.  They are more trapped and blinkered by identity politics than the left, because the left debates the issues openly, while the right denies them. 

[Another example of deep-seated projection: intellectual leaders on the right (I know, bear with me here), still worry and complain about post-modern thinking on the left.  The left had that debate and moved on from it 10-20 years ago.  Meanwhile officials in the Bush White House said things like “we create our own reality”.]

Is it just me or do all three of them look like they’ve just fogged a VW bus with Jeff Spicoli?

Klein’s reportage and punditry actually improved.  It turned out that he just had never had any kind of serious feedback from people who cared about what the truth was, so he just wrote whatever rightwing BS fell into his head.  He started factchecking.  He started not assuming that his life was the average American’s life.

Well, your mileage may vary.  Fortunately, Klein is actually a somewhat decent person, if a little tunnel-visioned, and actually cares about what other people think of him and about doing a good job.  But plenty of other pundits don’t care what others think, are happy to lie, are just in it for a paycheck, or, like Ann Althouse, become more entrenched in their lies and bullshit when criticized.

I said it in the thread below about Mr. Burger Hero and I’ll repeat it here - my retired on-Social-Security sick-but-don’t-have-health-insurance in-laws are PANICKING about Obama taking their guns away; this is, of course, at the same time that the husbands of two of their daughters have lost their jobs in this crappy economy and they live in an economically disastrous area of California.

Actually, though, it makes perfect sense and is perfectly logical if you realize that they have no control over their jobs, the economy, or their health insurance.  The one and only thing in their lives that is under their control is their guns.  Not to mention the normal human fears of aging, etc.

If you already feel like the world is falling apart and every iota of control you have is slipping away, of course you’re going to desperately cling to the one thing you feel you can control.

If your relatives were teenagers, they might develop an eating disorder for that feeling of control.  At their age, they’re going for guns.

Republicans gripe and whine about what they call “identity politics” on the left.  I only just realized that this is because, like in so many other areas, they are projecting.

I’ve come to realize that when it comes to the right wing, the answer to any question that comes up is always that they’re projecting.  Always.

The guy in my office who hears the dogwhistles tells me that the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act which passed the Senate yesterday will establish forced labor, youth brigades, internment/labor camps, etc. And uniforms. Probably brown shirted uniforms.

Just like VISTA and Americorp and Senior Corp.

Watch for it in wingnut tirades coming at you soon.

Bosworth, on the other hand, she was willing to protect the flag from flag-burners by supporting an amendment to ban it, so at least the Stars and Stripes would be safe with her!

Bosworth-Focke:

IIRC that quote is from 1994, and Feinstein was not talking about guns generally, but about “assault weapons”.  She felt the restrictions on a specific set of weapons did not go far enough (incidentally, even those restrictions lapsed in 2004).  Despite all the quotes the NRA has taken out of context, she is not single-mindedly anti-gun. She supports the right to own a gun for hunting or self-defense.  She just doesn’t think that convicted felons should be able to buy .50 caliber military sniper rifles at a gun show without a background check or waiting period.

I guess my point is that in 2008 the Supreme Court told us that gun ownership is an individual - not a collective - right, but that regulations and restrictions are A-OK.  Some gun-control advocates (pro and con) may disagree with that reading, but they’re not going to amend the Constitution anytime soon.

Sometimes I also look at a picture of Obama and think, “Can you believe this guy is our president?” Only I’m grinning at the time, and generally feeling like I did when I finally got an electric race track for Christmas.  Except way more.

He looks slightly goofy and very wonkish.  Not bad things in a politician.

Look, I know you guys are using him, but we’re willing to trade.  You can have three of our beige politicians if we can have him.  Hell, we’d give you the entire Labour Maori caucus and the New Zealand First leadership in an instant.

Hm, my officemate was bitching the other day that Obama was going to force us all to volunteer for shit, possibly as an alternative to compulsory military service.  And I see from the GIVE act press release that A) it’s not quite that and B) he should shut the fuck up and start writing grant proposals, because if there’s any funding in that bill, his current pet projects could probably get some of it.  He’s all about organizing volunteers to teach science to kids.  Let’s keep America competitive!

True, up to a point. Gotta remember that all Republicans aren’t bumpkins. There’s the financial sector as well. Of course they’re psyched too, but for altogether different reasons. Thought that they were the best and the brightest. Scoreboard says otherwise. They’re still figuring out how to cope.

stryx,

The House draft version did contain the following provision [SEC. 6104. DUTIES] (emphasis mine):

(6) Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.

From what I can tell this section was taken out from the versions (House and Senate) that passed. So, it looks like no forced labor for now, but fingers crossed that our beloved politicians manage to enact something similar some time soon. [You know, for the good of the Nation and all as forced upon us by our sage politicians.]

And since you mentioned this Act, I challenge readers here to guess which is the one and only health-related prohibited activity/ineligible organizations when it comes to the Healthy Futures Corps, the healthcare component of the Act. Give up? Here it is:

Providing abortion services or referrals for receipt of such services.

Which pretty much excludes any and all hospitals and clinics with repro age female patients from participating. [Even the Catholic-est of all hospital still has to provide care/refer an ectopic.]

The identity politics thing of the right is not even based on anything but wishful thinking.  They ignore a mountain of complex behaviour, waiting for the moment when you do or say something that they would deem to be roughly stereotypical of their ideas of your race/gender.  Then they pounce on it, and take that as evidence of your true essence.  As I say, they ignore everything else.

We also have to remember that a whole lot of the fail has been right out in the open for years, with the caveat that anyone who noticed it got ostracized as a leftwing loon. Now you have the white house press secretary making the jokes that millions of us had been making bitterly for years.

And when you can’t have someone arrested as an enemy combatant or thrown off the press plane, suddenly they don’t respect you as much. So the reporters who just kowtow to power are starting to turn a little. But given their utter lack of anything sensible, the GOP is still getting treated with far more respect than it deserves.

That picture makes perfect sense for this post. It’s about people who spend all their time being defensive and belligerent because their testicles are excessively vulnerable.

I think the Republican success of the previous 6 years was mostly a matter of their voters being more excited and having more to win or lose in the elections. The 2006 and 2008 elections were situations in which people felt they had more to lose from the status quo.

I’d be awfully careful about assuming this is a “center-left” nation and that the Dems will win elections without trying to create legitimate excitement.

The problem with the Repubs is that they started to attract, as their main team, people who did actually believe the bullshit they spewed. In 1994, they had material that was good for the rubes, but most people in the leadership knew it was bullshit. By 2000, they had too many of the rubes with positions of power in the party. And rubes are rubes… they’re not meant to run things.

Their hold was fragile because all they had was artificial excitement - the excitement of the rubes - and when the game changed, they no longer had the cynical leaders to change the game plan.

In short: I agree, they’re psyched out. The rubes are reeling from their losses, unable to realize that the problem is that, hey, they’re rubes.

Obama and the dems in general have to create real success and legitimate excitement, or the Repubs might find some new rubes to harvest. I’m not sure they’re able to do that… but they might.

I’m not saying this to denigrate the Obama team or the Dems; I’m not saying that they’re not doing some awfully good things right now.

What I am saying is that, from 2000 to 2006, we saw signs of serious illness with this country’s political health, and two election cycles is *not* enough that this illness will go away. We really need something like substantive health care reform or a way to build the economy from the working class upward. More people making enough money to spend to build up local economies, rather than rich people making boatloads of money with an expectation that it’ll trickle down. With that as a basis, it’ll be easier to convince people that politics really matters, so that an excitable bunch of rubes don’t end up swinging elections.

This country was moving towards a Democratic majority since 1992. The country is becoming more educated, more urban, and more diverse.  This movement was merely temporarily de-railed by 9/11.

The Reagan Coalition began to crack-up the moment Perot announced he was running for President, just like the New Deal coalition cracked up when George Wallace got traction for President in 1968. Even in 1994, the Republicans won an election that had record low turnout. In 2000, they didn’t win the popular vote for President and had to carry on a lot of funny business to squeak out a <S>win</s> appointment.

Like I said, this was derailed by 9/11 and they were able to use fear of terrorism to win and (again, BARELY) win in 2004.

Once that was played out, the re-aliagment continued on its course and happened in 2008.

The other problem: the Republicans are more obsessed with Winning and Losing than with actually governing and doing the jobs they win or lose.  It all begins and ends with being a Winner or being a Loser.

Let’s face it: their inability to govern and the way their ideologically pure policies went bigtime FAIL means that they are now Losers with a capital “L”.

If any of your friends express concern about gun confiscation, suggest that they check on the latest update at

http://hasobamatakenawayourgunsyet.com/

Invite them to check as often as they feel the need.

I love that site, Older.

There are too many pro-Second Amendment (civil libertarian) Democrats from the west for Obama to do that even if he wanted to. Gun control is dead as a national issue, period.

pro-Second Amendment (civil libertarian) Democrats from the west

East of the Mississipp too.