Andrew Sullivan, one of those delightful conservatives who is nearly as non-stereotypical as they come, has been spending some time thinking about just who the big parties represent in modern American politics, and who they will represent in the coming years. It's an interesting question - while the die-hard Red State-Blue State vendetta has been hyped ad nauseam, there's a sizable (and rapidly-growing) section of the population that's become disenfranchised with both sides. Or, as Joe Lieberman put it in 2006, "The fastest growing political party in America is no party."
We may be on the verge of a real realignment. I'm a refugee right now, the kind of refugee who sees Ron Paul and Barack Obama as the harbingers of a new politics.
Paul and Obama, of course, are lagging far behind the front-runners of their respective parties in the polls, which may call Sullivan's hypothesis into question. But the email that prompted his ponderations made some excellent points:
I've met a fair number of people who would ordinarily be pretty far to the left who are fans of Ron Paul. They love his opposition to the war. I've been trying to think about what that means.
In our system, any party that wins is necessarily going to be built on coalition. And for a long time, the components of the coalitions that the two parties have tried to put together have been pretty much fixed. I think that what's going on, really, is that the old coalition blueprints are falling apart.
...
I know this sounds crazy -- that some new conservative coalition would incorporate this radical left wing view of cold war american foreign policy. But really, I don't know if it's any crazier than some of the lefty types I know swooning over Ron Paul. I think these are strange times, and that interesting things are possible now.
Interesting, indeed. And perhaps not as implausible as many might think, given what the traditional "conservative" approach to foreign policy has been - essentially the complete opposite of what the Republican Party has come to support since 9/11. Remember when Republicans would rail against the lack of an exit strategy in a Democratic foreign intervention? Remember when Bush (yes, the current one) emphasized that he wouldn't use our troops for nation building? Oh, and remember when Democrats were the party of big government?
The times, they are a-changin'.
