The Myth of the Majority

In today's New York Times, David Brooks writes about the GOP's maturation into a true "majority party". With the passage of the Medicare bill, Brooks argues, the GOP has finally demonstrated that it knows how to govern — which for Brooks seems to boil down to using the budget to create new entitlements to woo vital constituency groups.

While that's a fairly limited definition of "governing", it seems to foreshadow his claim that there is a natural life cycle to being the majority party.

The majority will ossify. It will lose touch with its principles and eventually crumble under the weight of its own spoils.

Brooks goes on to say that it took the New Deal Democrats 60 years to collapse in that way, and that we can expect the same time frame to obtain for the Republicans.

Brooks overlooks a couple of important differences, however. First, whatever the Medicare bill proved about political maturity, the energy bill proved the opposite. The Medicare bill passed because it seemed to help a lot of people who needed help; the energy bill failed because it was a naked power grab that couldn't be seen as benefiting anyone but a few energy companies.

Second, despite Brooks' claim of GOP majority status, this is still very much a 50-50 country. Republicans won control of the House and Senate in the 1990s, but more people still voted for Gore than Bush in 2000.

Most importantly, however, the New Deal and Great Socity initiatives that allowed Democrats to be the majority party for so long actually made this country a better place — they reduced poverty, reduced the impact of the business cylce, fed the hungry, and took care of the elderly. Republicans control Congress not because a majority of Americans have rejected these policies, but because the GOP was very good at mobilizing new groups (e.g. conservative Christians) via wedge issues (e.g. abortion). And that's the rub — people running the GOP are committed to dismantling the social safety net, but there's no constituency for that outside the beltway.

My prediction? If Bush wins re-elect in 2004, the GOP will move full speed ahead with its agenda. After a couple of Supreme Court vacancies are filled with Scalia clones, the Court will overturn Roe vs Wade. More tax cuts are higher deficits will force Medicare and Social Security cutbacks as the boomers start to retire. And many of the social programs that millions of people collectively rely on to feed their families, heat their homes, and get health care for their children will vanish. 60 more years of GOP "dominance"? That's off by an order of magnitude. If the GOP wins in 2004, say goodbye to the GOP.

Pronounced

Yesterday I married Mary Kim Christy. There were times in my life I doubted I would ever get married, but after being reunited with her after a period of several years, the decision was the obvious, and obviously right, one.

We were pronounced "husband and wife" at approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Amelia Island, Florida, just outside of Jacksonville. It was a private ceremony, but we do have pictures.

Now back to the honeymoon. More later after we get back to Washington.

CBS Caves

When I read via Atrios that CBS was getting flack from the RNC about their upcoming miniseries about Reagan, I couldn't believe the GOP's audacity. Now that CBS is either going to cancel or drastically revise the miniseries, I can't believe the network's craveness.

Please, let's have no more talk about the liberal media, shall we?

WTF?

I don't even know what to say about this story.

The federal government Monday announced it is paying Linda Tripp and her attorneys $595,000 to settle allegations that the Department of Defense violated her privacy rights when confidential information about her was disclosed during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

In addition, the government agreed to retroactively give Tripp three annual outstanding performance evaluations for her work at the Department of Defense, increasing the value of her retirement.

The irony. The hypocrisy. The blatant political payoff. The Bush administation isn't even trying to appear even-handed anymore.