Buddhist philosophy, a body of knowledge that is able to wonderfully state the obvious hidden from all of us, states that you need competing forces to define each other. You need the night to define what the day is not. You need good to define aspects of evil and so forth. We need conservatism to define liberalism.
If you try to eliminate one defining entity, logic carves out the same dissenting entity from what remains. For instance, I hold a stick with a left end and a right end. I hate the left end of the stick, so I cut it off. Good riddance, right? But wait, I look at my freshly cut stick to see that there’s another left end of my stick.
My point is that if the Republican party slits its own throat and marginalizes itself into oblivion, the Democrat party will shift more center to accomodate those old Republicans that remain. I identify with the Democrats because they at least talk and try to implement the lefty progressive programs I support. If the republicans head into the sunset, the Democrats will invariably adopt more Republican positions in the name of maintaining their status at the top. I don’t think the Republicans will disappear as a viable alternative to the Democrats, but it does look possible. One could argue that our entire political landscape will shift to the left if the Republicans go the way of the dodo bird. Somehow, I don’t think so.
A good example of this is President Obama’s bailout package. Yes, there are a lot of non-financially oriented provisions in the bill. Yes, there is funding for a lot of Democrat pet projects that appear to not directly affect our dire situations. But I have to give the Democrats credit for thinking long term and trying to tackle the tanking economy from a number of different angles. But as the White House makes concessions, they lose a bit of their identity as progressive liberals that really caught the left on fire during the election. A small example of this phenomena is found in the sidelined family planning provision of the stimulus bill. Less babies do alleviate the demand for resources. Sure that’s a charged claim, but it’s true. Does this family planning provision belong in the stimulus bill? It’s debatable. But the cost of the funding (a couple hundred million dollars, I believe) is peanuts in the larger scheme of things. Obama dumps the provision when the Republicans start crying pork and refusing to look at the broader problem. He now inches closer to the middle in the name of bi-partisanship abandoning the progressives and still getting zero support from Republicans in the House. We’re now one step closer to being one big happy political party. solidarity!
Some would say that this is smart politics and good for the country. Political solidarity rooted in good centrist ideas. That way everyone feels included, but no one really gets what they want. The raving right and the loud left are left in the cold while no one ideology is allowed to fully develop in the country. Sounds good. sort of.
We will have to abandon the Democrats (if you have not done so already), If we continue to speculate about the demise of the Republican party and the potential adoption of more conservative social and/or fiscal conservative positions. We will have to create a New Left party that will continue the struggle that the Democrats of old allegedly fought but have now abandoned in the name of political centrism. Die hard social and/or economic conservatism is cut off of our stick and the present day Democrats become the new right.
