Ryan ChartrandWashington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. published an article titled “The Party of Tomorrow” Tuesday in which he discusses the state of politics in America, more specifically the future of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Both political parties are electing new chairmen and thus both stand to reinvent their party’s public discourse. For Democrats, this is the time to hold on to the open-minded, moderate aura that President-elect Obama has established. On the other hand, the widespread losses that Republicans suffered in the last election have placed their party in a peculiar and delicate situation.
Dionne asked the director of polling at The Washington Post to crunch media exit poll statistics from the last two elections by party and ideology, and he found that “In 2004, 18- to 29-year-olds tilted only narrowly Democratic, 37 percent to 35 percent. In 2008, 45 percent of the under-30s called themselves Democrat; only 26 percent called themselves Republican.”
So, there is a striking trend of people our age leaning toward the Democratic Party. Some would say that this trend arises, not from a newfound liberal persuasion in college-aged people, but because during the last election our generation strongly resonated with the politics of Barack Obama.
There is no certain way to predict if people indicated that they were Democrats last November because of Barack Obama, if there was a genuine resonance with the ideas of the Democratic Party or if it was due to the simple fact that more Democrats came to the polls.
Dionne claims that there was a genuine resonance between the Democratic Party and the American people, and he credits the change of heart to what has been termed by others “The Bush Effect” and the rigid, stale dogmas of the Republican Party.
I do not condone compromising ideological values for political purposes nor do I approve of political opportunists, but I do believe that the conservatives need to adapt to the moderate voice in America if they want to be effective in future American politics.
In times like these, when simply maintaining a job and paying the bills is an issue for many people, and as we watch the middle class slowly dissolve into poverty, the promise of fiscal responsibility and low taxes just doesn’t cut it.
In hard financial times like these, those two absolutes of the Republican Party’s ideology reveal how distant they are from the cares of the average American. It reminds me of the famous phrase, “Let them eat cake,” which was said to be uttered by Marie Antoinette during the famine in France.
And sadly, the Republican Party’s focus doesn’t get any better from there. One of the four Republican contenders for chairman is Chip Saltsman, who is known for releasing a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” which aired on the Rush Limbaugh radio talk show.
That song is extremely offensive and racist, and while I do not believe that the Republicans will end up with Saltsman as their chairman, the very fact that he is being considered for the position is disheartening and perplexing.
On the other hand, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has been offered a position as chairman of the Democratic Party, and has been hailed by an Obama advisor as “a pragmatic progressive; less concerned about orthodoxies than about getting things done.” The flow of thought in America is swiftly headed in a definite direction – away from rigid ideology on both sides and toward a renewal of thoughtful, creative policies.
That said, I would not want the Republican Party to lose its place in American discourse, because I believe that we need them as a reliable check and balance for the policies that will be coming out of the Democratic Senate, Congress and White House.
However, I am having trouble reconciling the ideal of the two party system with what I see coming from the Republican Party. Americans need them to throw away their agenda and their preconceived notions of what may have worked for the 1980s, and come to the table ready to talk about what will work today.
As I have written before, neither the far left agenda of total market regulation, high taxes and entitlement programs, or the right’s agenda of market deregulation, low taxes and the end of entitlement programs will help us out of the recession.
Both parties need to fight for new centrist ideas, and Republicans need to start creating progressive solutions to the issues facing average Americans right now. Perhaps more importantly, Republicans need not futilely resist the healthy current of open-minded political discourse in America for the next four years.
Stephanie England is an English junior and a Mustang Daily politcal columnist.