…but I don’t think Sabato understands the full measure of Conservative anger and fear about our dramatic shift towards socialism. We will not go quietly into the good night.

have stuck them with, I think they’ll have a V8 moment.

The right’s inability to listen to news like this and adjust your message will spell the doom of your party.

I long for a split government, and given the Republican Party’s current state of total disarray, I fear I will be feeling this way for a long time to come.

Wise up. Run moderates. You’ll win for a change, and people will like you again.

Excellent post, Mr. Richardson. I agree that it is far too early to jump to any conclusions, one way or the other. As you correctly note, if Pres. Obama is a proven failure (like Jimmy Carter), he will be a one term president, and the purported “permanent” shift to the Democrats will not occur. The other political shifts (1932 and 1980) only were recognized as such after-the-fact, and therefore only time will tell if Dr. Sabato’s hasty prediction is accurate.

and that seems very likely, it seems that it will be very hard to dislodge the Dems for years to come. They are creating whole new classes of wards of the state. They are making industries wards of the state. Where are people going to turn but to the State party for the well-being?

Plus, there needs to be a fundamental cultural shift among Republicans that doesn’t seem anywhere near even beginning. Republcans seem dominated by their sense of second-rate status in Washington, and even comfortable with it. There need to be game-changers, and a lot of them, in Congress, and they don’t seem to be there. GWB taught them to be timid, and diminutive, and they have learned that lesson disturbingly well. If they continue to sit passively by, it will be a very, very long time before Democratic control of government is changed.

Plus, they have 4 or 8 years to stack the bench with their kind of judges. Whatever they can’t do in Congress, the judges will take care of.

It just doesn’t look like a rosey picture to me.

…I think that someone needs to ask him how the John Kerry Administration worked out. (He predicted Kerry would win in ‘04.)

I do think Sabato has some merit to his argument, the country has unfortunately shifted to the Left. Whether it stays there is a different matter. In the same way the country made a hard shift to the Right and the Republicans after 9/11, things can quickly change.

If the current economic situation only gets as bad as it is right now, I think the Democrats will continue to trounce Republicans over the next several elections.

However, if the economy starts to look like it did in the late seventies, with double digit inflation, higher unemployment, high energy prices, high interest rates, etc, than I think the country will move away from the Democrats. A foreign policy catastrophe or two would also seal the deal.

I personally think things are going to get much worse, but unfortunately the Republican Party doesn’t have very effective leaders to capitalize on it, and the MSM is absolutely committed to propping up the Democrats.

If you pay attention to Larry, you know he likes to be on bandwagon. Nothing against him personally, he just has a tendency to move with the wind.

Obama won by 5 percent, hardly a landslide, and that was against a great war hero but a flawed candidate who ran a terrible campaign.

I’m in MA, my mother is a union nurse (doesn’t agree with her union at all). She is surround by not only obama friendly people because they are union but also because this is a very liberal state. She’s told me that since February the usually vocal democratic and obama supporter have been very quiet. They are not partisan dem’s but they vote that way. Those people are not happy, just imagine what the rest of the country feels.

If the economy remains as bad as it is right now, or even collapses further into a depressionary deflation spiral with 25% or more unemployment, the Dems will be in power for a very long time. When people stare destitution in the face they turn to Socialists. If on the other hand we get double or triple digit inflation a few years from now, it will be Jimmy Carter redux. That will set up the Dems for major defeats in 2014 or 2016. Bottom line - Deflation helps the Dems. Inflation helps the GOP.

is real. Notice I said “prospect”. However it is not a foregone conclusion.

I agree with all of you who posit that we must return to conservative principles etc. However tbeauchamp has a legitimate point even if the solution he proposes is incorrect.

He writes “and I think until you figure out how to talk to voters like me, minority status will be your reality”

This point is relevant. On a site like RedState we all care a great deal about principles and that’s great. We like to preach to the choir – so good for us. Let me be clear – we should not compromise conservative principles — but — we must learn to sell them better.

Now, I recognize that to the enlightened reader having to “sell” the blatantly obvious is painful. But the real situation in this country features an electorate that has been conditioned to a particular type of message delivery; one which Republicans are particular poor at providing.

Let me give several examples drawn from the original diary:

Each of the trends mentioned are true. Minorities, young people, and professionals are all trending pro-democrat. Why? Fundamentally because Democrats have done a better job of convincing these groups that their ideas are kinder, cooler and more enlightened respectively. This isn’t about principles but it is about marketing those principles and the candidates used to front them.

The bottom line: 70% of the electorate is influenced by marketing. Democrats have better marketing (abetted by the constant marketing of news organizations) and at the presidential level had a far better candidate. If Republicans continue to suck at marketing and run mediocre candidates we will continue to fail. Newt Gingrich is one of the few people who understand this concept and tries to work within it. Unfortunately Newt has too much baggage to be the best the Republican party has to offer.

What I’ve been watching and hoping for is someone, anyone, to step up and find the right tone and language to recast Republican ideas in modern language with modern conservative solutions to the issues of today. Instead I see an inept paralysis of ideas and a lot of shouting about principles.

There is nothing conservative about the ” Anything Goes” position of Liberal-tarians.

Think for yourself for a change. This may seem like a play on words, but stop relying on others to do your thinking for you. People will always vote for the individual who they think will do the most for them, give them the most advantages and generally take care of them as individuals. Then, they discover it was all a smoke screen and the individual was thinking mainly of what he or she could get out if, usually financially, and could care less about keeping any “promises” made to get himself or herself elected. Al Gore, for instance, was only a modest millionaire before the global warming plum came along and not will undoubtedly wind up a billionaire. I would image that Obama has similar plans. So, while you are having trouble scraping up enough money to feed your family and keep a roof over your head, the fat cats in Congress and getting even fatter. My Party, particularly the Liberal branch, is the worst of the lot and consider their takeover a complete and final success. I love it when wealthy people pretend to care about the huddled masses at their feet when at heart they feel that that is where they belong, at their feet! So keep right on following the pack and see where it leads you. I would love to live long enough to see an honest person elected to something before I die. Having been a registered Democrat for fifty-four years, I am still waiting. I am not alone, however, because I would imagine there are millions of Americans who would like to see just one totally honest individual elected, one who put his or her personal gain on hold long enough to fight a real fight for our nation.