You buy stocks when they're low. You buy cars when a dealer's inventory is high and they gotta move product. Basically, it's wise to get a bargain when a bargain's to be gotten. So, is now the time to "buy" Republican?
If you're a liberal I know what you're thinking - besides how badly you want to raise my taxes: why would any right minded individual (no pun) go over to "the other side?" Besides the fact that "they" don't stand for anything "we" stand for, the Republican party is dead meat. Shattered, captainless and they can't find voters.
First, don't buy the hype. Republican stock is battered, but it's not quite yet junk bond status. Yes, Obama used their hind ends to wipe the electoral map with, but if you read the numbers that wasn't necessarily because the electorate as a whole shifted toward the Left. Republicans, smelling defeat, stayed home. Probably even if they'd made a better showing they wouldn't've won, but they could've made things more competitive. However, should the Rs find somebody who can whip them into a frenzy, by 2012 they might be back in force.
So, before the radical wing of the party has a chance to re-take the reins - sublime fellows like Georgia Rep. Paul Broun who's made the rhetorical leap from "Obama as closet Muslim" to "Obama as Hitler '08" - now's the time to engage the Right-leaning moderates who get that the Neo-Con movement is dead. The small R republicans who understand the party needs to adapt to survive. That means moving toward the center, finding candidates with greater regional appeal and it for sure means finding a whole lot more minorities to get into the mix.
If that strategy sounds crazily brazen or wholly untenable - swelling the depleted Republican ranks with sleeper Centrists - it's just a modified page out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook. By going regional, identifying and supporting Blue Dog Democrats, he helped map the 2006 mid-term victory.
Instead of merely turning a blind eye - or raised middle finger - to the "other side," get in there. Let them know if they want a shot at earning your vote they need listen as much as they have in the past hectored and lectured. And remember, when you go to the polls you can vote how you please, so there's nothing lost by engagement and open mindedness if it forces "them" to do as much as well.
More importantly, let's not for a moment allow the Dems to take their victory and our votes for granted. Competition never hurt anybody, least of all the consumer.
Or in this case, the voter.
For More news and views visit That Minority Thing.com