The last time our two-party system shook was when President Richard Nixon, a Republican, successfully drew Southern whites away from the Democratic Party by exploiting racist sentiment. Decades later, are we verging on another shake- up? The Democrats are engaged in an internal war between party liberals like Rep. John Conyers, Jr., D-Mich., and party conservatives like former Virginia Gov.Mark Warner. Meanwhile the GOP seems stuck in gerrymandering, pork-barreling machine politics. Both parties are going through the motions, and this monster movie is getting old. Could someone stop the reel?
The Democrats' civil war simmers in Madison. The employees of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin raise money, then spend it—and that is basically the extent of their strategy. These industrious fundraisers look down upon the Dane County Democrats as hopelessly liberal and out of touch\ with real Wisconsin people. You get the feeling that State and Dane County Democrats don't like one another. In fact, if not for all the old, depressing Kerry campaign memorabilia in their offices, the State Democrats could be mistaken for little league Republicans.
Last December, regarding withdrawal from Iraq, she told people in Kentucky, ""I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit, and I reject an open timetable that has no ending attached to it."" What a politician, huh? Such statements are perfectly crafted to mean absolutely nothing, allowing her to straddle the debate within her party. She's an unstoppable, helmet-haired robot.
The GOP, that Frankenstein octopus, has so far done better at holding its constituent parts together. One tentacle, that of Christian conservatism, grips working and middle-class whites. The other tentacle, that of Big Business rapacity, strokes the upper-classes.
Meanwhile, the GOP-body bloats on federal dollars in Washington, D.C., perpetuating its existence as political beast. If that sounds extreme, it is because the facts are: Senate Republicans last Thursday increased the federal debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion before approving a $2.3 trillion election year budget. What has the American public received in return?
Let us count the blessings. No Child Left Behind, an under-funded scholastic austerity program. A pension plan reform bill, work of House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, that will reduce pensions. A domestic wiretapping program as useless for catching terrorists as it is useful for a police state. Three years in Iraq fighting someone else's fight at the cost of more than 2,300 American soldiers dead. Gas costing $2.59 per gallon last Saturday in Madison. More young black male dropouts incarcerated than employed. An exodus of jobs to Asia. Dick Cheney's shotgun-play. It's enough to make you engage your capacity for disbelief.
Still, the Republican coalition is not ironclad. In fact, as Thomas Frank points out in his book, ""What's the Matter with Kansas?"" it would make some sense if the rural U.S. population did not vote the same as corporate elites. And the recent battle over United Arab Emirates-owned DP World operating our Gulf and Atlantic ports can be viewed as the provincial conservatives defeating the corporate conservatives.
Both Democrats and Republicans lack vision and a program for leading the country. One party squabbles over whether it ought to resemble the GOP. Meanwhile the GOP eats—rather than governs—the country's resources, trust and moral reserves.
We should hope that in times like these the next generation of Big Bill Haywoods, Tom Watsons, Martin Luther Kings and Jesse Jacksons mount their anti-party establishment insurgencies; but it's just as likely the bats will fly out from the banana trees, giving us more Ross Perots, Steve Forbes, Barry Goldwaters and George Wallaces.
Either way, the future of our two-party system appears on the verge of a shake-up far more fundamental than Nixon's. Our two parties have not been so calcified since Reconstruction ended in 1877.
Mark Twain called those decades the Gilded Age. Or the Great American Barbecue. And what followed? The Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Wisconsin's own Robert M. LaFollette. What will happen when our current Great American Barbecue ends is anybody's guess.
Teddy O'Reilly is a senior majoring in history. His column appears every Wednesday in The Daily Cardinal. Send comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
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