Roiling Political Currents

Are we having fun yet? This is a week when Democrat officeholders have been taking a look at the political winds and deciding not to run. As in Sen. Dodd (D-CT), Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), and Gov. Ritter (D-CO).

Then there are Dick Morris and Eileen McGann writing that the center-right Democrats are finished. Back in the Nineties it was the center-left Republicans that got wiped out. They voted with the center right and their constituents decided that they wanted real Democrats, not fake ones. Of course, some of the liberal Republicans, like Sen. Chafee of Rhode Island and Jeffords of Vermont, switched parties. But now it's the turn of center-right Democrats to face the music or switch.

Now that Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Byron Dorgan in the Senate and the likes of Marion Berry, Tom Perriello and John Spratt Jr. in the House have shown how easily they fold under pressure and how thin their conservatism really is, their states and districts will no longer be deceived into re-electing them. They will be replaced by real Republicans.

The question is, of course, should the switchers go all the way and become Tea Pary members? David Brooks notes how the American people are turning against the "educated class."

Americans are moving away from the administration, not toward it...

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

As in health care, cap-and-trade, abortion, gun control. You could call it the "tea party tendency." Of course, Brooks assures us, "I’m not a fan of this movement." No, darling, not really recherché enough.

Yep, things are on the march, but we don't know where they are heading.

This is exactly why I wanted Barack Obama to become president. I felt that once the American people got a taste of real Democratic government they would upchuck on the spot, just like they did in the Nineties when they got a taste of Bill Clinton in 1993-94.

The problem for the Democrats and the educated class is that they have been around running things for over half a century. Inevitably, over a period like that, a political elite gets really corrupt. And I don't just mean in a flagrant Chicago-politics way. I mean in a lazy self-dealing way.

Eventually, despite all the pretty words and the goodies given to them, the people turn against an entrenched elite, and the tea party movement looks like it symbolizes that turning for us in the 2010s.

How about a Republican Tea Party? Any takers?