The Conservative Party — A Prospectus and Call for Action

Introduction

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." — Abraham Lincoln

"Stand for nothing, and you will fall for anything." — Anonymous

Among the many misgivings the American Founding Fathers voiced about their political innovation of popular government was their fear of "factions," James Madison's term for political parties.

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority," Madison wrote in the Federalist Paper No. 10.

However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.

Madison argued that there are but two methods for eliminating the "violence of factions": removing the cause of factionalism or controlling its effects. He furthermore argued that there are but two methods for removing the cause of faction: destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence or giving every citizen the "same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests."

The first remedy would be worse than the disease, he said, because "liberty is to faction what air is to fire." The second "expedient" would be "as impracticable as the first would be unwise," he said, adding:

As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

The latent cause of factionalism or party spirit can be found in the contentious nature of man, Madison observed.

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

Madison said it would be vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good. "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm," he worried. "Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole."

The inference to which we are brought, Madison said, is that the causes of factionalism cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought by controlling its effects. And that relief can best be found in a truly republican form of government. A "pure democracy," by which a passionate majority may impose its will at will, is certain to lead to a tyranny in which there is "nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party," he said.

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A republic, by which Madison said he meant "a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking." By "scheme of representation," Madison meant the delegation of the government to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.

But his faith in this form of government depended entirely on the moral character of both the electors and the elected.

Representative government has the advantage "to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves."

On the other hand, he observed, there is always the danger of unjust and unscrupulous representatives working against the common good of the citizenry. "Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people."

Thus it is vital that even representative powers be diffused, checked and balanced, and the genius of the American federal system is that these powers are indeed so allocated. "The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures."

In the American system, "it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters," Madison said, in terms which may seem naive in light of today's civil and political horrors, but which also seem to foresee the modern circumstance.

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.

The Unthinkable Realized

We see from the words of this Federalist Paper No. 10, that there were an number of things which Madison and his fellow Founding Patriots thought impossible under the American system of diffused government, or, if not impossible, at least unthinkable. Among these were the notion that every citizen would someday come to have the "same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests," thus dissolving the need for any "factions" or parties advocating diverse political thoughts or systems. Similarly, it seemed inconceivable to them that some "wicked project" such as "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property..." could someday pervade the "whole body of the Union."

What Madison considered unthinkable now seems, in our time, to be racing past the realm of possibility into the province of the probable. Our present parties, at least at their leadership levels, if not at the grass roots at one end of the shortening political spectrum, are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. Calls for political unity, bipartisanship, and "reaching across the aisle" are everywhere, and anyone who insists that taking principled positions against the grain but for the ultimate good of the country and our cherished freedoms is accused of standing in the way of progress (read: progressivism).

A demographically, philosophically and culturally homogeneous supermajority is rising to a height which gives it near unchecked courage to stifle and extinguish dissent. Political commentator Patrick Buchanan, who is one of the nation's most distinguished leaders to have elevated principle above today's style of unprincipled politics, suggests that a new political monolith is arising in America — one in which the politics of guilt and pity and class and race are rolling like a tsunami over the politics of self-governing freedom which so marvelously distinguished our nation at its birth.

This monolith is emerging naturally from the even more monolithic institution of American public education, he says. The dominant faction is "capturing a rising share of the young and college-educated, who are emerging from schools and colleges where the values of the counterculture ... have become the new orthodoxy," he writes.

Overwhelmed in this flood is Principled Conservatism, not because conservative principles have all but evaporated from American hearts but because, with the passing of their last world-class advocate, Ronald Reagan, no clarion voice remains to remind the electorate to their true best interests — those so astonishingly carried onto the human stage by our Founding Fathers and their spiritual ancestors. The modern Republican Party, which pretends to be the champion of these principles, has not only lost its understanding of their true breadth and depth but also its stomach for defending what vestiges remain. The power brokers of the GOP, the elitist blue-bloods who have failed to discern the times, continue their blind drive toward national political consensus in hopes of sounding broadminded and of maintaining their country-club prerogatives, even as the body politic plunges into the abyss. As presidential candidate Barack Obama was fond of saying of his 2008 GOP opponent John McCain, "He just doesn't get it." He was right. In short, the party, epitomized by McCain and his old-boy RINO network, has lost its vision and thus no longer knows where to look for the truths which could salvage this nation. And when vision is lost it rarely returns.

All this seems to suggest that these blind eyes need replacement — an organic transplant. We submit there is little or no hope of reviving a viable political vision within an institution which has lost its way, its wisdom and its understanding and sees virtue in pursuing power through watered-down mimicry of rivals who have passionately driven their own dark visions of progress away from our national roots and have already succeeded in implanting that vision into the mind of the nation.

The time has come replace the Republican Party. This is not a call for a new conservative third-party movement. It is a call for the wholesale abandonment of that now useless party and the genesis of a new party in its stead. To be sure, the hapless blue-bloods and appeasement-minded party elite will continue cluelessly to cling to their dying institution and its name. They may continue to speak for some time of "reform," which they naively believe will revitalize their tired out faction and recapture the loyalties of a nation which has already pledged its allegiance to the progressive banner. But these "reforms" are little more than the winds of syncretism, and they provide the drifting nation with no anchor in American values.

We call for the birth a Conservative Party of America. A replacement party for the GOP — not a third-party rival. A courageous challenger to the growing monolith. We call on the stalwarts of the conservative movement in Congress and the Senate, in statehouses across the land, in talk radio and other media, in think tanks and political institutions of all kinds to publicly embrace this new party, officially change their party designation and affiliation, and work boldly for a new birth of freedom under the banner of organized Conservatism.

We invite the conservative grassroots to join in dialogue and radical action toward a sea-change in the civic life of our beloved homeland.

Abraham Lincoln, in 1858, asked what constitutes the bulwark of this nation's liberty and independence. It is not our fortifications or might, since these very things could actually be turned against our liberties, he warned, offering instead: "Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors."

The Eve of the American Reawakening

The following is an excerpt of a speech that Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) delivered to the Council for National Policy in Washington DC. Click here to read the entire speech.

To those who say we should put the Reagan era behind us – I have a better idea. Let's put the Bush era behind us.To those who say we should redefine our principles, I have a better idea: we don't need to redefine our principles; we need to return to them.

To those of the Republican establishment, who misled our party for years, who dismantled so much of what Ronald Reagan accomplished and now tell us "the other side has something" and we have nothing. To them I can't improve upon Cromwell's words: "You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing; it is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You shall now give way to better men. Now depart and let us have done with you, I say, in the name of God, GO!"

"The other side has something and we have nothing?

"What is the something the other side has – that some say we have to be respectful and mindful of?

Statism. Shortage. Paternalism. That's their "something" that seems to so overawe and over-impress these scions of a failed party establishment

Statism, Shortage and Paternalism is what we are told to be mindful and respectful of? I don't think so.

Their statism is "something" so extreme that the entire national debt accumulated from the first day of the George Washington administration to the very last day of the George W. Bush administration will literally double in the next five years and triple in the next ten.

The tax increases already proposed to support it will rob every family of more than $2,500 from its purchasing power every year. We're supposed to respect that? The American people don't respect it. The American people know that you cannot spend your way rich; that you cannot borrow your way out of debt and you cannot tax your way to prosperity. And they know that if you live well beyond your means today, you must of necessity live well BELOW your means in the future. And that's not a future we want for our children.

Their entire policy is predicated on maintaining shortages of everything from health care to energy and then using the force of government to ration that shortage according to their own whims. The "something" that they propose to solve their government-induced shortages is having bureaucrats tell us what medical treatments our kids may have and when they may have them; raising energy prices until we bicycle to work; telling us what kind of light bulbs to use, where to set our thermostats, when to use our appliances.And then there's Paternalism. That's what Rick Santelli was talking about. When your neighbor buys the house he can't afford – it's now your job to pay his mortgage. When the fraternity brothers of Paulson and Geitner party their investments into the ground – now it's your job to cover their losses. When the reckless country-clubbers of General Motors and Chrysler give away the farm to the UAW – now it's your job to make up the difference, and by the way, now it's Barney Frank's job to tell you what kind of car you may buy.

That is the "something" that seems to send these self-described "New Republicans," into paroxysms of awe and policy-envy.That's the "something" that some people are so deathly afraid of saying "NO" to. Churchill said, "Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word "NO." Let that not be the epitaph of the English-speaking peoples or of parliamentary democracy ... There, in one single word, is the resolve which the forces of freedom and progress, of tolerance and goodwill, should take."

What is the "nothing" that we have that so dismays and disgusts these same messiahs of mediocrity – this "nothing" that's convinced them that we must wean ourselves from our unseemly nostalgia with such irrelevant has-beens as Reagan, and Lincoln and Jefferson – I add the others because they stood for exactly the same principles as Reagan.We stand for freedom.

We stand for abundance.

We stand for individual responsibility.

Freedom. Abundance and Responsibility. That is our platform.

Those who call that "nothing" are the same failed leaders who disdained it during the Reagan years and dismantled it as soon as the Reagan years were over.

They stand for statism. We stand for freedom: The God-given right to enjoy the fruit of our own labor; the right to raise our children according to our own values; the right to express our opinions and our faith freely and without reserve; the right to defend ourselves and our families; the right to enter into voluntary associations with each other for our mutual betterment without an army of busy-bodies telling us what is best for us.

They stand for the rationing of shortage. We stand for abundance: what happens when free men and free women enjoy the liberty to go as far as their desire, talent and imagination can guide them and as far as their labor, industry and enterprise can take them. Societies prosper when freedom protects the rights of each of us to decide on our own what we will produce and what we will consume. Government exists to protect the conditions that produce abundance, not to ration shortages that government has caused.They stand for paternalism. We stand for personal responsibility. That means you stand by your promises. That means you tell your customers the truth about your products and investments. It means if you bring a child into the world then by God you look after that child. And it means if you make a bad decision, you set it right and you learn from it – and you realize that the bad decisions we all make from time to time is the price we pay for the freedom to make all the good decisions in our lives.

Freedom. Abundance. Responsibility. Ladies and Gentlemen, that ain't "nothing." That's everything.

Gingrich Predicts Conservative Party Formation

Friday, April 3, 2009 8:53 AM

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warns that conservatives could leave the GOP and form a third party in 2012 if Republicans don’t do more to rein in government spending. “If the Republicans can’t break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012, Gingrich said during an address to students at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri. Gingrich attacked President Barack Obama’s “monstrosity of a budget,” but acknowledged that Republicans are also to blame for the huge increase in federal spending, CNN reported. “Remember, everything Obama’s doing, Bush started last year,” he said. “If you’re going to talk about big spending, the mistakes of the Bush administration last year are fully as bad as the mistakes of Obama’s first two, three months.” Gingrich predicted that “fed up” Americans will instigate a “nationwide rebellion at the polls,” and said the increased government spending under Obama is “literally irrational.” © 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Gingrich: Obama revitalizing conservatives DeLay says Republicans have chance to regain Congress in 2010

WorldNet Daily

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A "socialist revolution" launched by President Obama will end in an electoral defeat for the Democrats in 2010, with the Republicans having a chance to regain a majority in the House of Representatives, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told WND.

"What Obama has done is an abomination," DeLay said in an interview at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, sponsored by theAmerican Conservative Union.

"With the budget the administration rolled out to Congress this week,'" DeLay said, "it's clear President Obama does not understand economics and his goal is to advance a leftist agenda of massive spending, more social welfare entitlement programs, a huge expansion of government and increased taxes."

DeLay predicted the trillion-dollar deficits projected by the Obama administration budget "will devastate the economy."

The former congressman is actively supporting the Coalition for a Conservative Majority, a non-profit organization led by Chairman Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state and finalist for chairman of the Republican National Committee.

DeLay was encouraged only that the Obama administration has moved so far to the political left that the conservative movement has been re-energized.

"If the administration continues along this path," DeLay predicted, "President Obama will go down to defeat in the 2012 presidential election."

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich agreed in his CPAC speech today before a central ballroom so packed by the conference's record 8,500 attendees that adjoining meeting rooms had to be opened for live television feeds.

Entering the room to an extended standing ovation, Gingrich began by taking exception with Attorney General Eric Holder's recent comment that the U.S. is a nation of cowards on the subject of race.

Tom DeLay

"I welcome an opportunity to have a discussion with you about cowardice – anywhere, anytime, anyplace," Gingrich challenged. "This is a nation courageous enough to not be ruled by people who won't tell us the truth.

"If the attorney general thinks we are a nation of cowards, the Obama administration is just plain dumb."

Gingrich is general chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future, self-described as "a non-partisan organization designed to rise above traditional grid-locked partisanship to provide real, significant solutions to the most important issues facing our country."

Gingrich, who considered running for president in 2008, called for a revival of the Reagan revolution, agreeing with DeLay in characterizing the Obama budget plan as "the boldest effort to create a European socialism we have ever seen."

Gingrich ridiculed Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's performance on camera in the House chamber as Obama delivered his address to Congress earlier this week.

"Pelosi reacted hyperactively to Obama's speech," he said. "She was standing to applaud even before President Obama completed his sentences.

"She even applauded when President Obama attacked CEOs of bailout companies who continue to use private airplanes," he taunted, to loud applause. "Why should the speaker of the House have a private airplane at taxpayer expense? She should have the same opportunity to encounter TSA as the rest of us."

Gingrich also ridiculed Obama's congressional address, saying he is "such a master of language that I didn't entirely understand what he was saying."

"How is it we are not going to raise taxes on anybody who makes under $250,000 a year – unless you use electricity, or buy gasoline, or buy heating oil, or use natural gas?" Gingrich asked rhetorically.

"The group that will be least taxed under President Obama's budget may end up being the Amish in central Pennsylvania," he quipped.

"I believe we should leave here with the goal of making the elections of 2010 the most consequential in history," Gingrich challenged the CPAC audience.

"What we are being offered by the Democrats is higher taxes, bigger government, more corruption," he stressed. "We have every right to go to the polls and defeat the vision of the Democratic left-wing machine, even if it means running conservative Democrats in congressional districts certain to vote Democratic in the next election."

February 27, 2009

A Conservative Brand

By Ernest Istook

Washington Times - Feb. 8, 2009

A few years ago we said goodbye to the Oldsmobile. It went the way of the Pierce Arrow, Plymouth and Studebaker.

Some believe conservatives and Republicans will be the next brands doomed to follow into extinction. They forecast death by suicide for the GOP and extinction via political climate change for conservatives. 

But let's not bury either group beside the Whigs and the Mugwumps. Republicans and conservatives overlap but are not identical. Yet they need each other to flourish because Democrats own the liberal brand. Unless they have a conservative brand, Republicans will have no brand at all. 

Most conservatives believe that America will back them if they simply stand firm on their principles. But that's not enough because today's liberal dominance in Washington reflects American attitudes more than we'd like to admit. The economy, demographic shifts and having a skilled liberal communicator as president make it insufficient for conservative officeholders to abide by their principles. 

John F. Kennedy's famed inaugural speech challenge has been flipped upside-down. Asking "what you can do for your country" is redefined to mean supporting big government rather than a call to self-responsibility. 

Conservatives must accept the burden of educating a nation whose core founding principles have been eroded by left-leaning media, Hollywood and political correctness, and damaged by conservative misbehavior. 

Fixing our brand requires that we educate, communicate and advocate differently. The lower-tax message won't resonate with the millions of Americans who already enjoy zero-income-tax liability, thanks to conservative efforts. Those voters ask, "What have you done for me lately?" 

The high cost of Congress is the way to re-establish the appeal to personal pocketbooks. We need a kitchen-table agenda that reflects both the concerns of the moment and timeless principles. "Economic stimulus" benefits are worth less to families than if Washington halted the policies that keep jacking up prices (often in the name of helping children or, more recently, to protect the planet). 

This consumer-oriented conservative approach should focus on how government has escalated the costs of everything from health care to energy, food and more. Programs and subsidies touted by the left are often an effort to offset and mask these high prices. 

The approach is not new. Ronald Reagan convinced the nation that government was often the problem, not the solution, and he told stories to back it up. Today, there's even more proof than in Mr. Reagan's time. 

The most recent energy bill made food, cars, gasoline and even light bulbs more expensive. Washington has caused soaring medical bills and health insurance, washing machines that have doubled in price, and "lo-flo" toilets that don't flush right. Automakers projected the bill would raise car prices by $5,000 to $7,000 per vehicle — an extra burden Detroit doesn't need. 

Such details are readily available but only rarely exploited. When candidate Barack Obama told a newspaper that "under my [energy] plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket," it went almost unnoticed. Why does the left keep subsidizing alternative energy? It costs more (even after subsidies), causing higher fuel bills and lower mileage. Ethanol subsidies diverted so much corn that food prices soared. 

A 2004 government report admitted that federal regulations cost our economy at least $1.1 trillion each year. That's $3,666 per person, so it's more than $15,000 for a family of four — in addition to taxes. Federal red tape is also a huge reason why health care is so expensive. For each hour spent with patients, our doctors, nurses and their staff must spend equal time doing the paperwork dictated by 135,000 pages of federal health care regulations. Then there's government's role in the mortgage meltdown that started our economic nose dive. 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development decreed that big chunks of mortgages must be issued to borrowers with poor finances. The requirement started at 12 percent of all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages in 1996. By 2008, that had more than doubled, to 28 percent. 

The true price of big government should be told to families who sit around their kitchen table to consider their finances. The full cost goes beyond taxes; it's also an issue of freedom. Congress' bright idea to ban incandescent bulbs is especially galling. Smart shoppers can buy them for under 25 cents each, but the new curly-cue fluorescent bulbs run $2 or more. 

But even if they last eight times longer and save energy, I resent Congress telling me I've got no choice. Plus, since the new bulbs contain mercury, we're given special rules to dispose of broken or burned-out bulbs. 

For conservatives to succeed, it's not enough to find new thinkers to replace the likes of William F. Buckley. Strong voices must come from elected leaders, to demonstrate how thought can be translated into action. More than a political leader, Newt Gingrich was and remains an educational leader. The same with Dick Armey. The loss of those two smaller-government champions greatly diminished the Republican majority in Congress. They've not been replaced in that role. 

Even if the right can duplicate President Obama's campaign mastery of modern communications, the message must resonate. After all, smaller, less-intrusive government would indeed be "change." Conservatives must educate and communicate better. But without something worthwhile to say — unless we stand for something — all efforts will be wasted. 

The neglected message is that big government is the cause, not the solution, for many of our current problems. That message should be told as Mr. Reagan always did it, with a good story and a smile. Optimism is the final key ingredient to carry the day. 

• Former Rep. Ernest Istook, Oklahoma Republican, calls himself a "recovering congressman" after serving 14 years in the House of Representatives. His e-mail address is eistook@gmail.com.

No Permanent Majorities in America

By Michael Barone

January 03, 2009

As we approach the change from a Republican to a Democratic administration, I have been thinking about the differences in the basic character of our two historic parties -- the oldest and third oldest free political parties in the world (number two, at least by my count, is the British Conservative Party).

Democrats are now hoping that their party can achieve something like permanent majority status. They can take heart that their presidential candidate won by a wider margin and their party has larger congressional majorities than the Republicans had when they entertained similar hopes four years ago. But there is reason for caution, and not just because the Republicans fell so far short. And the reason lies in the difference in the basic character of the parties.

 

The Republican Party throughout our history has been a party whose core constituency has been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Northern Protestants. Today, it means white married Christians. Yet such people, however typical, have never made up a majority in our culturally and regionally diverse nation.

The Republican core constituency tends to be cohesive and coherent (though sometimes, like now, quarrelsome). But it has almost never been by itself enough to win. As some Democrats like to remind you, Republicans have lost the popular vote for president in four of the last five elections.

The Democratic Party throughout our history has been the party whose core constituencies have been those who are considered, by themselves and by others, to be something other than typical Americans. In the 19th century, that meant white Southerners and big city Catholics. Today, it means blacks and singles and seculars and those with postgraduate degrees. Such people, while atypical, potentially make up a majority. But they often do not have a lot in common -- and when they have differences over highly visible political issues, they are hard to hold together.

As some Republicans like to remind you, Democrats have lost seven of the 11 presidential elections since their landslide victory in 1964.

Partisan enthusiasts look forward to their side achieving lasting majority status. Others might take counsel from the political scientist David Mayhew, who casts doubt on whether permanent or long-lasting majorities are possible. When you look closely at the supposedly permanent partisan majorities of the past, they fade from view.

Republicans won all but two presidential elections from 1860 to 1892. But Democrats won majorities in the House for most of that period after the Southern states were readmitted to the Union. Republicans won all but two presidential elections from 1896 to 1928. And they held congressional majorities for most of that time, as well. Yet they won almost nowhere in the South, and at the time their dominance was by no means taken for granted.

And what of the New Deal Democratic majority from 1932 to 1968? New Deal Democrats took a hit in the off-year elections of 1938, and polling suggests the Republicans would have won in 1940 if domestic issues had been paramount. Instead, voters re-elected Franklin Roosevelt as a wartime president in 1940 and 1944.

Harry Truman, too, benefited from a foreign issue -- the successful Berlin airlift -- in 1948, and John F. Kennedy campaigned in 1960 as the most determined of Cold Warriors. The Democrats held Congress during almost all this period. But as liberal historians note mournfully, liberal Democrats had effective majorities for only a couple of years from the 1930s to the 1960s.

All of which suggests to me that the more natural state of partisan politics, in this country at least, is something less like party dominance and more like uneasy equilibrium. Equilibrium that swings to one side or another from time to time, as it has swung in varying measure to Democrats in 1992 and 2008 and to Republicans in 1994 and 2004.

Because of their basic character, both parties have difficult tasks in assembling and holding together majorities -- Republicans, because their core constituency is off-putting to those whom it defines as something other than typical Americans; Democrats, because of the difficult of holding together what is usually a very diverse and conflict-prone coalition.

Barack Obama now has that task. He has shown unusual skills and the capacity and willingness to stress what he has in common with those on the other side of the partisan divide. But already rents are appearing in the Democratic fabric -- over Rod Blagojevich, same-sex marriage and the unions' card check bill. My guess is that Obama will hold his majority together for a good long while, but not forever.

Copyright 2009, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Is the GOP Still a National Party?

By Patrick Buchanan

As President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address to a nation filled with anticipation and hope, the vital signs of the loyal opposition appear worse than worrisome.

The new majority of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Nixon cobbled together in 1972, that became the Reagan coalition of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation in 1984, is a faded memory. Demographically, philosophically and culturally, the party base has been shrinking since Bush I won his 40-state triumph over Michael Dukakis. Indeed, the Republican base is rapidly becoming a redoubt, a Fort Apache in Indian country.

In the National Journal, Ron Brownstein renders a grim prognosis of the party's chances of recapturing the White House. Consider:

In the five successive presidential elections, beginning with Clinton's victory in 1992 and ending with Obama's in 2008, 18 states and the District of Columbia, with 248 electoral votes among them, voted for the Democratic ticket all five times. John McCain did not come within 10 points of Obama in any of the 18, and he lost D.C. 92-8.

The 18 cover all of New England, save New Hampshire; New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland; four of the major states in the Midwest — Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota; and the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.

Three other states — Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico — have gone Democratic in four of the past five presidential contests. And Virginia and Colorado have ceased to be reliably red.

Not only are the 18 hostile terrain for any GOP presidential ticket, Republicans hold only three of their 36 Senate seats and fewer than 1 in 3 of their House seats. "Democrats also control two-thirds of these 18 governorships, every state House chamber, and all but two of the state Senates," writes Brownstein.

In many of the 18, the GOP has ceased to be competitive. In the New England states, for example, there is not a single Republican congressman. In New York, there are only three.

"State by state, election by election," says Brownstein, "Democrats since 1992 have constructed the party's largest and most durable Electoral College base in more than half a century. Call it the blue wall."

While that Democratic base is not yet as decisive as the Nixon-Reagan base in the South, and the Plains and Mountain States, it is becoming so solidified it may block any Republican from regaining the White House, in the absence of a catastrophically failed Democratic president.

What does the Republican base look like?

In the same five presidential contests, from 1992 to 2008, Republicans won 13 states all five times.

But the red 13 have but 93 electoral votes, fewer than a third of the number in "the blue wall."

What has been happening to the GOP? Three fatal contractions.

Demographically, the GOP is a party of white Americans, who in 1972 were perhaps 90 percent of the national vote. Nixon and Reagan rolled up almost two-thirds of that vote in 1972 and 1984. But because of abortion and aging, the white vote is shrinking as a share of the national vote and the population.

The minorities that are growing most rapidly, Hispanics and Asians, cast 60 to 70 percent of their presidential votes for the Democratic Party. Black Americans vote 9-1 for national Democrats. In 2008, they went 30-1.

Put succinctly, the red pool of voters is aging, shrinking and dying, while the blue pool, fed by high immigration and a high birth rate among immigrants, is steadily expanding.

Philosophically, too, the country is turning away from the GOP creed of small government and low taxes. Why?

Nearly 90 percent of immigrants, legal and illegal, are Third World poor or working-class and believe in and rely on government for help with health and housing, education and welfare. Second, tax cuts have dropped nearly 40 percent of wage earners from the tax rolls.

If one pays no federal income tax but reaps a cornucopia of benefits, it makes no sense to vote for the party of less government.

The GOP is overrepresented among the taxpaying class, while the Democratic Party is overrepresented among tax consumers. And the latter are growing at a faster rate than the former.

Lastly, Democrats are capturing a rising share of the young and college-educated, who are emerging from schools and colleges where the values of the counterculture on issues from abortion to same-sex marriage to affirmative action have become the new orthodoxy.

The Republican "lock" on the presidency, crafted by Nixon, and patented by Reagan, has been picked. The only lingering question is whether an era of inexorable Republican decline has set in.

Patrick Buchanan is the author of the new book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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