WHATEVER YOUR IDEOLOGY, YOUR OPPONENT’S WORLDVIEW IS OFFICIALLY DEAD:
Shot: MSNBC Fires Melissa Harris-Perry. Is Left-Wing News Dead?
—PJTV, March 7th.
Chaser: The Conservative Era Is Over.
—Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, March 8th.
As I wrote back in the run-up to the 2010 midterms when alternating headlines declaring “The Death of Neoliberalism,” “The Obsolescence of Barack Obama,” and “The Death of Conservatism” were being put into circulation by pundits of all political stripes, “Whatever Your Ideology, Your Opponents’ Worldview Is Officially Dead.”
Of course, in early 2016, it is safe to say that, as Jim Geraghty writes, “Both Parties Are Coming Apart at the Seams:”
Will the Democratic and Republican parties break up? The enormous logistical challenges of building a new nationwide party from scratch make it unlikely that any faction will want to completely break away. But with such intense and irreconcilable divisions about the role of government, policy priorities, and just what the country needs, the two parties are already broken. And neither one looks likely to be genuinely united any time soon.
For over a century, the “Progressive” goal has been to transform America into Europe Lite. As Geraghty suggests, that could well mean fractious multiparty squabbles could become the norm here as well. How did we get here? Why, it’s as if the guy who said in 2004…
The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
…was lying through his teeth about his ultimate goals. Nahh — heaven forfend.