Griper Blade: Coalition of the Barely Willing

One of the dangers of writing a blog is that you'll eventually wind up repeatting yourself. And I do -- often. But that's because so many things bear repeating. So here it goes -- in a two party system, both parties are, by necessity, coalition parties. I think this is extremely important to remember when you're talking about american politics. Both the Republican and Democratic parties represent more than one school of thought and, therefore, represent more than one constituency who believe their issue is the most important issue in the world.

What the Republican Party is doing right now is relearning that fact. After six years of pretending to stand for one thing -- and that one thing being the neocon utopian vision -- they're finding that not everyone in the party agrees. The fiscal conservatives were happy enough with tax cuts -- until the spending got seriously out of control. The hawks were happy with the war -- until mission creep set in, the objectives became vague, and it started going south. And, as I've pointed out again and again, the religious conservatives have been happy with the rhetoric -- until it became clear that there'd never be any actual action on their issues.

There are more in the GOP coalition -- the global free marketeers, the libertarian-minded, the gun nuts, the corporate stooges, the talk radio brainwashed, etc. And each group thinks they're the real Republicans and everyone else is merely an ally...

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