2006: The year of Democrat Self-Immolation?

2006 can be a telling year of political realignment, if the Democrats continue on their path and if Republicans refind theirs.

The three main legs of the Democrat Party, in running counter to the basic jobs of government to provide for national security and core social services, are vying for the Party’s destruction. The new year may see that self-immolation pick up speed.

The Moveon-Pelosi-Reid-New York Times defeatocrat wing of the Democrat Party alienates many Americans by its harping opposition to firmness in confronting any foreign threat, and its influence over the news is lessening as it exhibits more desperation. The academic enclave claimed by graduates of the ‘60’s protest movements is seldom taken seriously anymore in public policy debates, its students are increasingly organizing to counter ideological uniformity, and financially beleaguered parents, alumni and public treasuries are imposing greater demands for accountability. The public employee unions bankrupting of budgets, which denies civic and social services to all, especially urban dwellers, are enraging tax-payers and other Americans.

The often extreme programs of secularism, moral relativism, and social liberalism that cuts across these three legs of the Democrat Party, also serves to chase away those observant of the sense of thousands of years of decency in Western civilization.

Republican principles and organization, and the independent development of the alternative new media, can take much of the credit for the shift in voter perceptions. But, far more, it is the Democrat Party itself that deserves most of the credit.

The primary factor that can either speed or slow the Democrat Party’s hoisting by its own petard is the Republican Party’s own failure to get its act together. As the Party, at least nominally, in control of the Congress and most State offices, Republican’s “big tent”, which has and will work to its electoral benefit, at the same time allows many in whose primary interest is neither the Party’s nor the nation’s.

That includes the corruptions of profiteering that a few of those privy to the levers of power abuse. That includes the self-serving pork and program spending supported by many Republicans, regardless of merit, while tilting away from social spending programs necessary to the mobility of a strong society toward those benefiting the more financially able. That includes unwillingness by some who control the margin of Congressional votes to follow through in support of fundamental intelligence and armed preparedness.

The “big tent” was erected on a foundation of fundamental values of governance. Permitting political termites to undermine the integrity of that foundation is the primary threat to continued Republican ascendancy, and the primary aid to slowing the self-arson to which the Democrat Party is subjecting itself. Unless Republican leaders strongly return to these fundamental integrity values, instead of 2006 becoming a year of realignment it will just be another teeter-totter over the abyss of confused domestic weakness and increased national perils abroad.