Amidst encroaching elections, the cliché of our republic as polarized is wrong. Wrong if “polarized” infers opposed forces on a liberal-conservative spectrum.
Our nation’s future exists in conservative shades, the choices being moderation or fundamentalism. Caricatured as overfed and undereducated, the Tea Party’s guile shaped this reality, leaving America an ample irony.
The party of God and country embraced Charles Darwin amidst Democratic embrace of faith. Republicans ditched compassionate conservatism for Tea Party dogma post-2008. Democrats stood motionless, with faith in the presidency and congressional majority as strategy itself.
Evolution teaches that those who adapt survive. Espousing tax cuts as tonic, American health care as archetypal, and bad war as an oxymoron, conservatives demanded Democrats compromise toward them. That’s what they got. 2008’s progressive potential was squandered on a too-small stimulus and health care in bedrock with the Heritage Foundation in 1989, Bob Dole in 1993, and Mitt Romney in 2006.
Health care is not the first or last issue Democrats will support in conservative incarnations. Democrats expend energy refuting Republican dogma without advocating any liberal agenda, leaving solely conservative outcomes for the issues.
Our ongoing budget talks provide this premise in practice. Which party advocates pro-growth measures? America’s options are to what degree we will follow the conservative myth regarding a positive correlation between budget cuts and GDP growth, never mind the sadistic premise of cutting services to the old and the poor sans sacrifice from the wealthy. If his words hold meaning, Mitt Romney does not believe this myth, but straying from party line is off the table.
This was of course evolution’s point. Republicans abandoned the search for the electoral messiah in favor of ideological conformity as a vehicle to congressional and state level dominance, the reason each red state shares the agenda of eliminating unions, legislating away Roe vs. Wade and preventing non-existent voter fraud (all of which were enacted or proposed in Idaho as of 2012) while the alleged liberal agenda provides little in the way of progress.
The call for fundamentalism and its corollary demand for compromise was a plot Democrats complied with. Their lame response weakened the liberal brand while ensuring conservative grounds for America’s future. While Democrats were busy losing battles, Republicans won the war.
Brian Marceau can be reached at [email protected]