Less than Permanent
Alas, the much-touted, and much-feared, "permanent Republican majority" of the twenty-first century seems to have become somewhat less than permanent, with chunks falling off every day.
Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott's resignation announcement on Monday was the latest in a wave of retirements to hit congressional Republicans, making an already difficult 2008 electoral landscape even more complicated for the minority party.
Party officials insist that the retirements — 17 members of the House and six senators — are simply the result of individual decisions and not indicative of a broader negative sentiment within the party.
[Chris Cillizza, "GOP Comeback Climb Is Increasingly Steep: Vacancies Appear in Competitive Areas", Washington Post, 27 November 2007.]
Is it churlish of me to point out that the Third Reich also fell far short of its expected one-thousand years?
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on Wednesday, 28 November 2007 at 02.17
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It's probably hard on the anything-to-win gang's psyche to realize their own excesses have fixed things so that anything probably won't be enough this time.
on Thursday, 29 November 2007 at 10.48
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"…with chunks falling off every day."
Maybe it's more like people climbing out of the wallow pit.
Modern government lends itself more to the Democrat/liberal mindset than to the Republican/conservative. It is not so traumatic for a conservative Republican to leave office: they realize life goes on, other things are available, self reliance is still an option. Democrats are a little more desperate, with more of their psyche tied up in large, centrally planned institutions, and the division of labor.
Back when I was helping to elect a local candidate, I noticed that a lot of "my" people were disenchanted with government: "Why vote? It doesn't do any good. They are all crooks anyway", while the other side had a little more enthusiasm for the enterprise: "Oh yeah, we gotta get our people in there, get some good programs for the people, redistribute some wealth, punish the rich, raise up the poor, cut loose all the free stuff that we aren't getting because of bad policy."