A Rovian plan? Read, and shudder.

I'm not sure if readers outside of Rhode Island have heard of Darrell M. West, a Political Science professor at Brown University. I know he's received some national attention, but I doubt he appears in your local news broadcasts on what seems like a weekly basis sometimes. I respect the guy, so when I saw an op-ed piece by him in yesterday's Providence Journal, "Consider McKinley in 1896 Has the GOP cemented its majority?," I made sure I read it.

And I'm glad that I did, because the piece ponders whether the Democrat Party is about to split apart and fade into political obscurity for the next few decades while the Republicans become the majority party of the nation; which is basically a carbon copy of the political climate at the turn of the last century when William McKinley was elected president in 1896. (An even weirder parallel that West doesn't mention between McKinley and Bush is that of unprovoked warfare which could also be looked upon as war for conquest, or a war fought for religious reasons. Bush has Iraq, and McKinley owns the War with the Philippines, which he started because he said God told him he must "Christianize the Filipinos." A remark to which historian Howard Zinn quipped, "Obviously, God did not tell the Filipinos." In reality, the United States wanted a colony so it could hang with all the other cool kids in Europe, and the Pacific had resource rich land that was ripe for the conquest. Of course, we can relate this to our war in Iraq, the seemingly religious drivings of Bush's policy, and the land being rich with one resource: oil. This historical anecdote really has nothing to do with political science, which is probably why West never mentioned it, but I just thought of it and figured it would be interesting. If you think I should have just shut up, well, uhm.. Screw. :>)

Shifting back on topic, West ends his piece with what can be taken as a warning to Democrats:

Meanwhile, the Democrats face some difficult soul searching after their losses. Some will criticize Kerry for having centered this election on foreign policy, as opposed to the traditional domestic issues of the economy, health care and education that generally undergird Democratic presidential victories. Critics will say that he should not have talked so much about his Vietnam experience, and should not have devoted so much effort to contesting Bush's foreign policy, but should have confronted the Republicans on the issues with which the Democrats often have an edge with voters. Others will complain about the quality of the campaign run by Kerry: that his message was not clearly focused and his campaign was slow to react to GOP attacks. Rather than let Bush criticize him as a liberal, he should have pointed out that the Republicans are outside the political mainstream on several key issues. Critics will say that if he had run a better campaign, the Democrats could have won.

However, that criticism ignores that the Democrats lost not only the presidential race but also seats in the Senate and House, and governorships. The Republican victory was a reflection not just of Kerry's deficiencies but also of a successful GOP strategy to focus the agenda on such issues as cultural values and security, on which the GOP was seen as the more competent party. The biggest risk for the Democrats is that their party will splinter between those who wanted to confront Bush on all fronts (the Howard Dean wing) and centrists who wanted to blur differences in some areas and confront Bush on selected topics that might have been advantageous to the Democrats.

If this happens, Karl Rove's vision becomes a reality.

You ever feel like you just stepped into a GOP strategy session? That's how I felt after reading that final line. West's public persona is that of a nonpartisan interested in studying how politics work, and he's intelligent enough not only to see what's happening on both sides, but also to observe the chess game inbetween them. And I think what West really said here is, "Hey Democrats, Rove's got you thiiiiis close to checkmate." It's this man's strategies which are always placing us on the defensive, but whenever always attributed Rove to Bush and how he helps Bush win. I don't think we've given thought to Rove's thinks his place in history as a whole is, or what he thinks his place is in the Republican Party, and what the Republican and Democrat parties current places in history are. We've been taught to think narrowly when going on the attack, but what about the big picture? Because this right here in the big picture. And as much as I've fought against the Democrats from my far left position, I do recognize that we need the party as a bulwark against broader conservative policies. I do recognize that without the Democrats, nobody is going to be big enough to take their place. The Greens membership isn't suddenly going to swell, especially when of any third party, they are now the closest to falling into disarray.

We do need the Democrats, but does that mean we need to put up with their usual centrist, Republicrat, defeatist philosophy that now isn't winning them any elections? Because to counter this philosophy means stepping on the toes of party heads, which then means playing into what is seemingly Rove's goal: to splinter the party apart, thus making the Republicans America's majority party by default because there will be no competition to counter their agenda.

What do you think?