“A change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war.”– Pete Townsend
If you are a regular reader of this thing I hope you are following a string of thought that has been going on this week. Sometimes things die. Sometimes they need to. We saw it with OAN and we see it with ourselves. We can be as cold and unfeeling as we want or we can rend our garments in some sort of dramatic casting away of spirits.
The cycle of life affects movements and groups just as much as it effects individuals. We are witnessing something that has really only been seen once in our nation’s history. Ironically or not, it happened to coincide with the Civil War. We are witnessing an existential crisis of sorts just like we did with the Civil War. We are seeing either the death of a party or the death of a nation. It is hard to determine which one is which yet.
The irony of ironies is that the Republicans will be destroyed either way and they allowed this to happen by allowing in a man that wasn’t even one of them. He was a Democrat as recently as 2000. His espoused beliefs shunned traditional Republican beliefs, but since he promised to own the liberals they didn’t particularly care one way or the other. Suddenly, the party became the man and the man became the party.
The two party system has its issues and problems but it is also a fascinating thing to watch from afar. It is like plate tectonics. The world is constantly changing and shifting under our feet. Each party survives by constantly campaigning to an audience of 50% plus one. They cater to groups in the hopes that those groups will someone coalesce into a voting bloc big enough to win national elections.
That is until they don’t. That’s when either the whole system comes crashing down or a new party emerges to take its place. Republicans are no longer going for 50 percent plus one. They can’t without shunning the man. So, they craft ways to circumvent the majority. It includes stacking the courts. It includes suppressing the vote. It includes outright stealing of the vote. Even without the man they have done this for decades. They did this knowing a demographic wave was coming. They did this rather than shift with the shifting plate tectonics to try to appeal to these changing demographics.
The American public is constantly changing. I’ve said this once and I’ve said this a thousand times. Conservatism is not dying. Conservatism is alive and well. Republicans are dying. They are dying because they are not conservative anymore. They are no longer about keeping the government out of our lives and keeping our taxes low. That’s always been a winning message. That message has been bastardized into low taxes for the rich and culture wars for everyone else.
What the Andrew Yang’s of the world need to understand is that we live in a two party ecosystem. His “Forward” party/movement sounds lovely, but it is premature. It threatens to destroy America. It doesn’t threaten us because of anything inherently wrong with itself. It threatens us because it divides our attention from destroying the last vestiges of a party that will devour all of us if we let it.
Once Republicans are dead then there will be a mass race to get to 50 percent plus one. There will be a mass race to determine who exactly Democrats will appeal to and who the new party will appeal to. Someone will appeal to conservative people that aren’t crazy, racist, or sexist. They will just be conservative. Maybe that will be Andrew Yang or maybe the Democrats take that shift and a more progressive party takes that spot. Maybe it will be the Forward party. Maybe it will be someone else. Republicans have to die first. It’s the circle of life and it has to happen.
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