grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

Yeah, given the fact that I've never actually been alive during the reign of a real "tax and spend! tax and spend!" Democrat, I have a really hard time freaking out because of the prospect of a return to Democratic control. It can't possibly be worse than a "tax and spend and make WAR!" Republican.

I don't think so. For one thing, it's already moved too far to the Democratic side for a serious shift to bring the Republicans back to power, the system being set up to favor incumbents as much as it is. If they want control back in 2010, they're going to have to start picking up seats now, or at the very least stop losing them, or else the margin will be too wide to overcome quickly. For another, the Republican Congress has absolutely nothing that they can sell to the voters to provide a reason to go for them. The Democrats can at least say (right or wrong) "we aren't the people who masterminded the disasterous war, or who let their party's leader go nuts with spending." They're lying, of course, but the Reps can't exactly say that. They don't have an ideological basis to build on, or a decades-long groundswell that they were on the right side of.

The Professor Farnsworth Effect will probably hurt too; as young voters (who are, if the surveys are to believed, much less Republican these days) start to enter the ages where voting starts to matter, the Republican neglect will start to matter.

First off, you're wrong. Republicans aren't tax and spend, they're borrow and spend. This is actually far more nefarious as it encourages big government, by reducing the perceived costs of services, and pushing the day of reckoning forward. Though, I agree, the Democrats that were president in my lifetime were pretty good on the economy, even Carter (he was screwed by previous administrations). Though I think there's a big difference between presidential Dems and Congressional ones. Congressional Dems are much more tax and spend than the Presidential ones. I think this is largely due to the fact that presidents often need to play against their type to get reelected and respected.

Uh, last I checked, the war was considered a massive failure only starting in 2005. I don't see how this makes gramps wrong.

EDIT: Except by clear-eyed, rational people like thoreau, who have been telling us since 1985 that the response to 9/11/01 should not be to invade Iraq.

Because he's the one who's saying that it was the war that reversed the trend away from conservatism among younger people. I'm saying that it was part of an already occurring generational shift that was turned up to 11 as a consequence of events on the ground. Taken as a group, in no sense are the current crop of 18-28-year-olds swayed by small government rhetoric. If the Republicans don't want to keep losing as they begin to grow older and actually start voting in reliable numbers, they'd better either hope something happens to change that or find new rhetoric to sell.

Just not a fan of being condescended to by old people during a debate. Funny, that.

And the WWII generation remained reliably pro-big government program for their entire demographic existance. If the economy goes even more to hell, and the kleptocracy continues unabated and unhidden, expect something similar to happen. In fact, I'd say it's even more likely to happen, since they already seem to have a strong but latent will to collectivism that the baby boomers/gen xers didn't and don't share.

EDITed: For clarity.

with sand in our vaginas.

And you don't suppose that the people who lost all their money, land or other property in the banks as the economic system began to swallow poor people whole after WWI and continuing through the Depression didn't feel the same way? Look at history; this is nothing new whatsoever. at the end of the road we're on is an economic collapse followed by some new(ish) form of collectivism. Because that's how people are when things get *really* bad.

Hey, take it up with Bowling for Soup.

EDIT: As to my mission, scientists of the future will find ways to predict butterfly effects. They determined that the commercial success of Ricky Martin's "La Vida Loca" set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the Iraq War. Something about some people meeting at a concert and therefore not being in the right place at the right time to get in a car accident that would have killed Mohammed Atta. I was sent to work as Ricky Martin's tutor while he was in Menudo, and I tried to persuade him to pursue a career in medicine. But it was a tough acting job for me to pull off, because I didn't actually think that the world needed one more pre-med, and I got into an argument in a bar after a frustrating day, and my stridency got me shot in the street, right in front of the younger me in 1985, and that set me on a path to stridency.