American Thinker | J.R. Dunn | May. 21, 2008
This is supposed to be liberalism’s year. We hear it from all sources on all points of the political spectrum. A miserable and disillusioned electorate, an energized base, an opposition both confused and demoralized – the 2008 election, we’re assured, is the left’s to lose.
We hear talk of a transformational election, like that of FDR in 1932 and Reagan in 1980. An election that imposes a new political template across the country as a whole. Or in this case, reimposes it, since the “new” template would in fact be nothing more than another repetition of FDR’s New Deal socialism and water.
Republicans appear to concur. Newt Gingrich, back from wherever it is aging revolutionaries go, has directed the GOP (following close consultations with Madame Hillary) to change its ways to match new realities. A frightened Republican leadership has duly echoed him. No alternative has been suggested. There’s little to do, it seems, but prepare for the deluge, and make plans to rebuild once the inevitable retreat begins.
This contention has become so widespread that it’s achieved the status of a received truth, with the danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there’s one problem with it: if the American left is in such great shape, why are all their programs collapsing?
The left moves by distinct and separate campaigns, a remnant of its origins as a revolutionary movement during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Overriding goals exist, but progress in fulfilling them is marked by limited, precisely targeted efforts carefully mapped out and executed for a particular effect. Some last only a few months, others a year or so, some for several years.
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Iraq has set the tone. The American left intended to ride the Iraq “disaster” to victory on all fronts, giving them a lock on political power unseen since the beginning of the Reagan era. That dream ended with the success of General David Petraeus’s surge strategy, which rousted Al Queda in Iraq with humiliating swiftness and thoroughness. Mention of Iraq then became scarce in the media and among left-of-center politicians.
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Global Warming was one of the more successful efforts at Green propaganda over the past decade, one that has paid a number of dividends (including financial). The science underlying warming was simplistic and badly worked out, and could not be expected to prevail for any extended period (e.g., the claim that CO2 was a major driver of global temperature, when in fact such elements as solar radiation, earth’s orbital variations, and water vapor are all more important).
The facts caught up with global warming last year. It became common knowledge that the earth’s temperature had remained constant since 1998, a problem compounded by a sudden drop in global temperature of nearly a degree and a half Fahrenheit. Neither development was predicted by any climate researcher’s model, nor could they be made to fit any accepted warming theory. The only alternative was the desperate adaption of an argument derived from a recent scientific paper released by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, contending that the Atlantic MultiDecadal Oscillation is holding temperatures down and will continue to do so until at least 2015. (Just in time to save the polar bears, too.) Though warming advocates will not admit it, this represents a surrender flag — what kind of overwhelming, universal climatic determinant is overthrown by a single oceanic variation? A more convincing explanation lies in the “quiet sun” thesis — the contention that we’re moving into a lengthy period of reduced solar activity. A few more cold winters will tell the tale.
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This is what the GOP is running against: people who want to lose a war, who are keeping alive an environmentalist scam, who (as a byproduct of that scam) have created conditions of serious hunger across the world, and who would not mind seeing a recession in the U.S., no matter how many people it hurts.
How do you lose against a hand like this? You lose by throwing your cards down and collapsing under the table whining about being forced to play at all. That’s what the GOP is doing — it can’t be described in any other way.
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