2012 election
Matt Miller's column in today's The Washington Post has to make you ask, "What about the budget?" After two years of demands, recriminations, and demagoguery galore about the budget deficit, national debt, and fiscal policy in general, won't dramatic political changes like the ones pollsters are predicting will happen in this election inevitably lead to massive changes in what the federal government spends and taxes?
Not a chance.
Assuming there are no big changes between now and election day (that is over just 10 more weeks), Republicans either will have narrow majorities in one or both houses of Congress or the Democrats will have smaller majorities in the House and Senate than they have now. In general, that's not a situation conducive to compromises, cooperation, and large changes.
She may be taking heat for a while and be blamed by some for McCain's losing the election, but as a I said a week or so ago, Sarah Palin is the new GOP rock star. Take a look at this from the Associated Press:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin hadn't been back home in Alaska for a full day and her staff had begun fielding requests Thursday for postelection interviews, including from Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, Larry King and others.
What's noteworthy about these interview requests in that they're from programs with very mainstream audiences. This is not Meet The Press. She'll get softball questions about lifetsyle rather than substantive questions on issues. Palin is likely to shine.
My guess is that Letterman and Colbert will be on her list soon.
Andrew opened an interesting and important subject yesterday that I suspect will be one of the big topics in the mainstream media tomorrow: is the 2008 election a "realignment"?
The answer is that it could be, but we won't really know for several years.
I did my senior thesis on realigning elections. It has been a long time since my last year in college, but one of the things that has stayed with me since I did that research (and typed the paper on erasable bond using an IMB Selectric) is that you can't instantly label an election as a realignment. It may have the potential of being a relatively permanent change in some voters' preferences, but one election is not a trend.
I'm one of those people who thinks that, if she's not elected vice president, Sarah Palin will be the GOP's rock star the next few years.
Spurred on by Palin herself, the reassessment of the Palin candidacy has already begun. We've already heard that it wasn't her fault, that she was mismanaged and ineptly handled, that Palin wasn't allowed to be Palin, that she wasn't properly prepped by the McCain people, that her rollout was badly handled, etc.
No other GOP candidate this year so excited the party faithful. Her crowds were bigger than the ones that came to see John McCain. And when you think back to the Republican primaries, it's hard to see how any of the other candidates could have duplicated that excitement.
Palin is likely to be the one that Republican candidates most want to have show up for a fundraiser in 2009 and 2010. This will be especially true of the socially conservative wing of the party that's been absolutely enthralled with her candidacy.
