Progressives who are not reading the far right media these days are really missing out.
The Op-Ed pages of the Wall Street Journal have started to blossom forth with unintended dreams of grandeur for Progressives. Faced with an impending re-aligning election featuring President Barack Obama, the one-time "movement of ideas" has nothing left but their own imagined nightmares. Of course, one ideologue's nightmare is a pragmatic American patriot's dream, and oh what a field of dreams the right wing media has become.
Pat Buchanan started off the parade of terror with his predictions of Obama's first 100 days. Reading through Buchanan's histrionic hyperbole you can almost hear his hoarse voice and see him hunched over, palms curling inwards, as if he is holding an invisible crystal ball which reveals, horror of horrors: immigration reform, marriage equality, voting reform, progressive taxation, and gasp universal health coverage!!!!! SCRRREEEEAAAMMMMM!!!!
Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal takes a look at the coming nightmare in the courts...
Consider the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his two terms as president, Ronald Reagan appointed eight judges, an average of one a year, to this court. They included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Larry Silberman, Stephen Williams, James Buckley, Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle. In his two terms, George W. Bush was able to name only four: John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh.Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.
The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation's most important regulatory court of appeals.
The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts. Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.On the Supreme Court, six of the current nine justices will be 70 years old or older on January 20, 2009. There is a widespread expectation that the next president could make four appointments in just his first term, with maybe two more in a second term. Here too we are poised for heavy change.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. All of the things that progressives have been fighting for, conservatives are histrionically raging against as the autumn winds and the fall of their ideology bring the crows home to roost.
In reality, Obama is much more of a centrist than progressives would like. His leadership will go a long way towards addressing the critical, transformational issues we face, but he will neither go nearly as far as many progressives would like nor so far as many conservatives fear.
The real nightmare for Republicans at this moment in time is that the Furies are on the wing; bringing retribution to those ideologues who have brought this nation to a critical precipice. The real nightmare for Republicans is in the mirror.
The GOP stands at a crossroads. Republicans can pretend that nothing has really changed, that this is still a "center-right" nation, and that only an ill-timed economic meltdown cost them the White House. This means leaving their party in the hands of the "movement conservatives" who have dominated the GOP for decades: the demagogues of reaction and resentment, the Christian rightists, the "values" voters, the anti-tax, anti-government zealots, the nativists, anti-rationalists and anti-secularists. The culmination of this approach would be to nominate Sarah Palin as their presidential candidate in 2016. Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.If Republicans choose the first option, the GOP will be taking the first steps toward becoming a marginal party, one that will eventually end up an object of curiosity in the historical display case along with such extinct specimens as the Know-Nothing Party. If they choose the second, they will not only save their party, they could help heal the grievous wounds their divisive politics have inflicted on the country.
If conservatives' track record over the last 40 years is any guide, they will choose the first. And I won't be putting any flowers on their grave.
Republicans have a choice: face the pragmatic reality of central progressive American values or join the political graveyard with the Whig and Know-Nothing parties.
Of course progressives have only one choice: work like hell until November 4 to ensure that this election makes every Republican nightmare come true.
