Wishful Thinking

After thoroughly screwing up pretty much every prediction they have made about which candidates will win the nominations (remember when Huckabee was going to surge to victory? what about Fred Thompson?), the pundit class is now focusing more and more of their attention on predicting the imminent downfall of the Republican party and conservativism in general. I guess they're trying to hunt after some bigger, slower game than those fleet-footed individual candidates.

The latest example I've found is this article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. The magazine ran a cover story a few weeks ago about the death of the Republican Party because of the myriad disasters that fall under the heading of the Bush presidency. I guess this column just wasn't finished in time.

The point of all the stories and columns is that conservative ideals have taken such a knocking during the last six years that no one will ever want to vote Republican again.

If only.

The 24 hour news cycle seems to have not only sped up the rate at which we receive news, it also seems to have affected how long the writers remember what they've written. Not that long ago I seem to remember reading about the permanent party realignment that was going to sweep Republicans into power (and Democrats out) for the next 50,000 years or so. I guess time flies when you're having fun because now the pendulum has swung the other way and it's the Democrats coming into their glorious ascendency.

On the one hand, I have to admire the sheer, straight faced nerve of pundits who can turn 180 degrees so quickly without blinking an eye. On the other hand, is there really so little news to report on in the world that we have to fill space with another round of overstated and likely incorrect predictions? Let's let the Democrats win an election or three before we start talking about the end of the Republicans.