Because commenters are so quick to point out when I'm wrong (though I'm not really wrong), I have to point out when I'm really right. As I predicated last year, the split of the GOP is now a happening. Rush telling McCain and his daughter to do like Specter and leave the GOP is nothing more than a symptom, an expression of the rupture of a hegemonic bloc that was fused in the late 70s. For now, the size of the Democratic party will swell (an effect of the economic crisis), but the moment things start stabilizing, a new party between the liberals (poor minorities and the educated class) and the base of the GOP (whites in the work class) will emerge. It will be a secular and pragmatic form of the GOP (the business class). The Europeanization of American politics will be completed without the world wars that transformed European politics. This result will be the end of a kind of history.
On September 4, 2008, I posted this:
What we learned from Palinâs speech? In 2004, the enemy was terrorism. RNCâs one message: terrorism is a real threat and the greatest military force is needed to defeat it. This time around, the enemy is simply one person, Obama. The single issue on the partyâs mind is Obama. The Republican convention is not about McCain but his opponent. The speakers can look neither right or left but only straight ahead at the giant Obama. Why this magnificent obsession? Because of this one fear: If the reasonable Obama goes in the White House, America will never return to their crazy end of the political spectrum. Obama is being attacked not because he is black, but because he represents the Europeanization of the American democracy.
On October 15, 2008, I posted this:
...The real rupture in American politics is in the area of the Republican party. The exact location of this break is between its working-class base and the top layer of its professional/business elites. The break is not an isolated event but a part of the larger transformation of American politicsâits current Europeanization. Obama's rise to power is also a consequence of this process. The result of Obama's presidency will be an increase of the government's role in the management of civil society; as for the break in the GOP, the result will be an American political system that has three parts: the Dems, the Republicans, and the far right. Or put another way: Obama, McCain, and Palin. The post-Obama problem for the Republicans will be how to draw to its side the more moderate elements of the hegemonic block that the Dems consolidated in Denver. As for Palin's far-right party, which, like its corresponding party in Austria, could well be called The Freedom Party, will remain powerful but never strong enough to control the political system.
On April 2, 2009, CNN posted this:
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is warning of a third party mutiny in 2012 if Republicans donât figure out a way to shape up.âIf the Republicans canât break out of being the right wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012,â Gingrich said Tuesday. The speech, to a group of students at the College of the Ozarks in Missouri, was recorded by Springfield TV station KY3.
On Friday April 3, I posted this:
My belief is in the larger steps of history. True, diurnal details are important, but only in the sense of explaining larger shifts and transformations in huge blocks of time. It is here, in thinking about the moment in historical blocks, that my Hegelianism comes out and shows its whole self. But because I think in the terms of historical movements and moments does not mean that I'm wrong. The big picture is often more true than the details of the daily.
