The Republican Party as we know it is on its deathbed. The long conservative reign over American politics has ended, and its life rests solely on the people's choices over the next two years. I propose we end it. Era of Good Feelings II, here we come.
It is not often we have the power to change our future in meaningful ways, but Tuesday's election has given us that opportunity. The choice is between reinvigorating the status quo ante in support of bitter, unrealistic partisan politics or forging a new future based on reasonable, moderate solutions to important problems.
Killing the current Republican Party is how we choose the latter. The reason is that the GOP has become increasingly extreme and out of touch with even most typical conservatives, and changing the debate from the party-line to what makes America better is now possible by favoring a newly moderate Democratic regime.
The Republican party is no longer a economically conservative party. Government spending has ballooned under Bush while tax revenues have decreased, creating both budget and trade deficits and sluggish economic growth. Stem cells, abortion and gay marriage are now the dominant cultural issues that rival the attention of serious problems like national security and education.
The Democratic victory also punished moderate Republicans: A large majority of seat pickups came in marginally Republican districts with marginally Republican representatives. Thus, the Republican party has moved significantly rightward toward its activists, the religious right and its political leader, President Bush. It is now, in effect, a predominantly Southern party as James Carville said Tuesday night, since the South was the only region where Republican incumbents were partially protected from national anti-GOP tides.
Democrats, however, have become a significantly more moderate party. Their center could now be argued to be in the Midwest and many of the new members of Congress are social conservatives. Thus, they can no longer be the party of upper class McGovernites, like the Clintons, John Kerry and Al Gore, since their base now includes the suburban middle class and rural voters in the Midwest.
We therefore have a choice between a national party of moderates and liberals with an increasingly diverse electoral base and an extreme, Southern party based on the religious and the rich. It is the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans all over again, substituting the Iraq War for the War of 1812, humiliating defeat for approximate victory, and Barack Obama for Andrew Jackson (a decade earlier).
What we need to do is work together to make America stronger instead of focusing on supporting a party's agenda. We can all agree that we can do better and that we need real change. But how do we achieve it? Cooperation and moderation. Thus the choice is ours: We have to demand sensible debate and policy options and that our politicians work responsibly instead of antagonistically.
Tuesday's election was the monumental first step. The rest is up to us to force our leaders to work constructively on our behalf. Where we go in 2008, then, is the key to our collective future. I say we end the GOP and vote it totally out of power. In doing so, the party will hopefully realize that moderation is preferable to extremism and that polarizing the country is an unacceptable and unhealthy political strategy. Until then, we should continually pressure the Democrats into moderating politics and reforming our nation responsibly, hoping to anchor the debate in the political center.
So if you want four more years of a worsening Iraq, fear, poor economic performance, religious domination of society, declining education, rising healthcare costs and hostile alliance-ending diplomacy, keep doing what you're doing. Keep the GOP in power in 2008. But if you want a change for something better, if you want a more responsive, more cooperative political environment and leadership, work to create a new political regime in the moderate Democratic party.
Jon Detzel is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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