Drifters

Callimachus comes up with a geographic political metaphor over at Donklephant.

[T]he nation as a whole has drifted right. So [the] old center-right is now more like center-center. Maybe we’re working on a continental drift metaphor here. As the country drifts right, the “anchored” left stays put, and cracks off from the center left. A gap opens and the disconnected fringe becomes an island adrift, a Madagascar, where natural traits exaggerate and exotic species evolve.

I don’t think the country has moved to the right so much as the country has moved on. The world has changed since 1968. People who haven’t changed in the meantime aren’t stranded on the left so much as they are stranded in time.

History always moves on. The country moves left at the same time it moves right. Some conservatives are breaking off from the center-right over Israel/Palestine and are lashing out as we speak.

Our Administration has jumped off the deep end and needs to be kicked out at our earliest opportunity:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that Israel will be expected to carry out further withdrawals that would ultimately lead to an independent Palestinian state, Israeli sources reported.
Rice said that she feels for those settlers being evacuated, but “It cannot be Gaza only.”

And to think that we once thought highly of Mrs. Rice. Well, no longer…
Thank you for allowing me to leave the Republican party for good and not feel in the least bit bad about it. The only thing I DO feel bad about is the time and expense I’ve put into stumping for you in the past. No more. You’re dead to me from now on.
I don’t consort with swine.

I suppose you could say that crowd is drifting even further to the right. But I think they’d deny it, and I think they’d be right. The country has – correctly, in my opinion – quietly moved to the left on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s because the intifada is no longer what it recently was. It has been beaten back, and history is moving on without some people.

UPDATE: Asher Abrams found a more apt comparison than I did, and he found it in Israel.