The conservatives are declining in America

Digby presents her analysis of the recent political history of the U.S. It is a lot more positive than I have felt for a long time.

Here is an excerpt of her superb post:

Rove was hailed as a genius because he told everyone he was a genius. (And there was a certain genius in being able to get such a patently unacceptable candidate [Bush 43] into high office.) But the truth is that he has been swimming against a strong tide for some time. We have all been thinking that the Bush II administration was the high water mark of the conservative era, but it was actually a decade earlier --- around 1994. Then we entered into a period of parity and now, finally, the momentum seems to be on the progressive side.

Miraculously, 9/11 only temporarily stalled that momentum politically but it didn't reverse it, largely because Karl Rove missed the opportunity to actually change the course of that slow moving realignment by having Bush reach out to the Democrats and the rest of the world and forge a new sort of consensus. Rove had Bush go the other way and stoke the base. It was a fatal error. And it is the ultimate proof of Rove's arrogant mediocrity. He was given a chance to possibly accomplish what up to then had only been hype [create a permanent Republican majority.] and he made the wrong choice, most likely because he couldn't give up the idea that he could make it happen through his own strength of will. (We don't need no stinking consensus...) [snip]

Until they reinvent themselves into something new, their movement is moribund and has been that way for a lot longer than all of us realized. For the Republican party it's always morning in America, 1984. They are a nostalgia act and don't even know it.

If Digby's argument is correct, then the Republicans (and especially the White House) have known they were declining at least since Bush 43 was appointed President in 2001. That would explain the major efforts to steal elections. They are in decline, and they reached the pinnacle using Rove's idea that a critical margin of voters would vote for perceived winners. That's the bandwagon effect. But it only works for you as long as you are perceived to be a winner.

I'd guess that Katrina sounded the death knell for that "winner" perception, and it first showed up in the polls with loss of the independent vote. The election of 2006 confirmed that loss, and the 2008 election is going to be a blood-bath.

The wave of Republican retirements from the House that is just beginning is a strong indication that the Republican Congressmen have seen the writing on the wall. [The Senate, being evenly divided at present, still leaves Republican Senators hope that they can perhaps get back into the majority. There is also the fact that being a U.S. Senator, even in the minority, is itself a very powerful position.]

So I feel reasonably certain that the conservative movement is dead, or at least moribund in the foreseeable future.

For the more extended period, however, I an really concerned about the shift of power away from Congress to the President. How much of what the Bush administration has done to create the "Unitary Presidency" can be reversed - ever?

The Cold War saw a period in which the Presidency took on a number of wartime powers beginning in WW II (see, for example Unilateral Presidential Powers: Significant Executive Orders, 1949-99 by Kenneth R. Mayer and Kevin Price) and never gave them up. Add the recent power-grab by Cheney-Bush to that, and the Constitution is beginning to look quite lopsided in favor of the President. The founders intended that Congress be the source of national power and the President be their executive officer.

In any case, I strongly recommend that you read the article Nostalgia Act by Digby.