As long as the Fundies have a death grip on that Party---I don't see them doing anything positive.

The Fundies run that Party and they will not let go easily.

When progressives strategize an upcoming election, they ultimate goal is start governing in such a way as to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people... or something along those lines.

If that's your goal, then your ideas and rhetoric can be interesting to listen to, think about, critique and debate.

When right-wingers strategize upcoming elections, they are either luxury-box righties, who want to preserve/re-establish a plutocracy, or bleacher-seat righties, motivated by xenophobia, homophobia, mysogony, etc.

The plutocrats can't make interesting statements about effective government, because they don't want to govern. Exception: War-mongering 'round the globe. Wars help preserve plutocracies, so right-wingers can make intriguing (and generally horrifying) statements about geopolitics. There's where your discussion and debate might ensue.

So, agreed. "Ideas" about "governing" that you are waiting to hear from the right, won't be forthcoming.

As for "small government," it was last seen quite recently, in the persons of Bill Clinton and his deficit-hawk ally, Leon Panetta, sweating themselves to a state of full-on swampass trying to balance the federal budget.

Which they eventually did, to such a surprising extent that Wall Street Journal articles began asking what would happen when the "long bond," i.e., 30-year U.S. Treasury paper, disappeared as an investment vehicle.

No long bond. Because we didn't need it. We would no longer be borrowing, except for short-term flexibility. The Clinton-Panetta budget was in surplus and the national debt was starting to shrink. It makes me want to puke just typing these words.

Then came Bush-Cheney. Small government for them? No. "Starve the beast" was the watchword. Meaning, spend in a frenzy to build deficits back up, preventing social programs from being enacted.
(Sorry, can't afford 'em.)

Again, it makes you want to fucking puke.

Im seeing the same thing on the conservative blogs I frequent: massive Republican denial that their fundamental assumptions (dogma since Nixon) no longer hold.

McCain and Giuliani represent the formula created by Nixon, run on by GWBush, which assumes a society that accepts the conventions and worldview of circa 1968 and fears to change it.  The American People voted for that one last time, and just barely, in the 2004 Fear Of Change election. That and the politicians that represent it are now refuted and rejected.

Romney and Palin represent the next/early bankrupcy stage of that thinking, the conventions and worldview of around 1980 and the awful sort of semieducated, vain, basically empty suits that are the epitome of the early Reagan Era, including the man himself.

Schwarzenegger is very much a European politician.  He understands what the national GOP does not about domestic policy, which is that Republicans have to accept their role as being conservatives and critics within the framework of a social democratic state/set of institutions and political logic.  Denial and clinging to the small government and dogmatic social inequality phantasmagoras may still work very short term, but it has no future.

On foreign policy, the game is all about finishing the last remains of the Cold War that involve Americans and regionally confining all those remains of it that do not.  And the future is all about the competition and cooperation of continental size alliances that are massive economic units: the European Union, the eventual North American/Caribbean Union, East Asia, and one or two others.  No Republican can yet get over the racial, cultural, and economic implications of this with their Party because its wings are still overcommitted to racist, classist/materialist, and religionist dogmatisms.  It is going to take a decade or more of Greatest Generation and early Boomer conservative dieout before they can snap out of Cold War and white/Christian privilege nostalgia is my estimate.

They haven't had to think for forty years.  It's a hard thing to learn, they're having horrible trouble with it and many never will.

A deep current through American politics seems to be a reverence for "common sense." The complexities in a rapidly changing world cannot be fully understood by anyone, no matter how well informed, so we rely on what seems to "feel right" when making many of our decisions.

Part of the conservative successes of the last 30 years had to do with the creation of the dominant themes of common sense. Their ideas were hammered into the American psyche relentlessly until it reached the point where all arguments started from the position that conservative ideas were the axioms of discourse. Regulation is bad, deregulation is good. Government isn't the solution, it's the problem. Knowledge is bad, faith is good, etc... These themes really took hold.

Unfortunately for conservatism, we've spent much of the last 30 years putting their ideas into practice and it hasn't turned out well. Going forward, I think conservatives really need to come to terms with the fact that conservatism has in fact been tried and it is unsustainable.

There are dangers to too much government but there are real dangers in too little. There are dangers in to much regulation but (as the current financial meltdown so perfectly illustrates) there are huge dangers in having too little. There are dangers in relying too much on objective "reality" but there are huge dangers when we rely too heavily on faith.

I could see a "conservative" rebirth if they ditch that term and really look at the world with fresh eyes. Conservatism has always seemed like an artificial philosophy built to support preconceptions. If they are truly to be reborn in any meaningful sense, conservatives are going to have to ditch their preconceptions, their unshakable certainties about how the world "is" and should be and build a new philosophy around the facts of a changing world.

Which tax model produces the optimal balance between stability and innovation? Which ethical model produces the optimal balance between freedom and morality. Which wealth distribution model produces the optimal balance between fairness and ambition. If conservatives really want to invent themselves anew, ditch their axiom manufacturing "think tanks" and create axiom "discovery tanks." Figure out the best way to improve America rather than the best way to spin it.

I think that a strong environmental platform and healthcare reform are the two wings where a rebirth or a reinvigoration will occur. The former dovetails nicely with the hunters and gun owners, thus an increase in interest in mountain states, and the religious, as in the stewards of creation. The writing is on the wall here for the typical moneyed republican against this and indeed, the environmental costs of doing business is getting factored into any business, look at the IBM green ads. Nice politics while sellable to all wings right now.

Secondly, the healthcare and pension costs are crippling businesses, though the latter is all pretty much isolated in automotive, air lines, etc. There will be a consensus on some kind of universal health, even to the point of the agreement of it as a right, if necessary, how that works out will a matter of how strong Obama and the Dems are. If the republicans take this off the table, like the Dems did with Guns, then there is a less reasons not to vote for Republicans.

In the long run, the Republicans cannot ignore HC and the environmental issues if they would like to make some kind of headway with the young. The 5 and 6 years of the world are now raised on organic is good, so this steadfast association of environmentalism with the 60's and the hippies has to go for the republican. Indeed, if Obama is reelected, the "summer of love" is almost 50 years in the past when that election comes up. Hippies are going to be as romanticized as Capone, see The Godfather, in the 80's.

more moderate for at least another decade. I say this because the party leaders are still Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and the front runners for their 2012 nominating contest are Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich, all members of the very far right. They don't care for centrism. This shows the cons still run the party, and don't intend on giving their power away until it is taken away. No one at all is suggesting ANYTHING wrong with any of their policies.

They will not re-emerge until they get their own Bill Clinton and their own DLC to lead their way out of the political wilderness. The Dems began to admit things were wrong with their policies and perception of such in the late '80s, whereas the Republicans merely think they were just not con enough. None of their candidates have appeal beyond Appalachia, the South, and the plains/upper rockies.

I think a lot of voters adopt one party or the other as young adults, and then stick with that party.

I come from a state where families are still mostly large and extended, where religion is important, and prosperity or poverty still depends on forces largely outside our control. In this environment, conservatism pays practical dividends in most of life, not just politics. And because this is so, conservatism is easy to accept and adopt politically for most folks. While Idaho is changing and growing fast, it remains a place where it's easy to travel for hours and see only a few people along the way. It remains a place where self-reliance is a physical necessity as much as a political philosophy, and the  physical requirements of living here make us all more conservative.

This is true with most of the Intermountain West, and isn't going to change. In fact, folks who move here become changed more than they change the natives.

I became a Democrat after being deeply offended by comments made by then-VP Spiro Agnew regarding the protest turmoil that boiled all over the Viet Nam war. As a young man, recently discharged from the military, I was an eye witness to both sides, and Spiro was just wrong, wrong. He's long dead and forgotten, lying in fading disgrace, but my distaste for the Republicans has remained with me almost 40 years later.

The reverse is true with one of my closest friends and a former Navy buddy. While in the service, neither of us was political at all, and if anything, he was more liberal in outlook than I, but after his business failed due to Carter's 20% interest rates on operating loans, he became a Republican, and remains so to this day.

But we agree on many things from both parties. He is distressed over the neo-con takeover, and I'm distressed by the recent Democrat thirst for revenge. I don't agree with any of the "Break Their Backs' statements at all.

I find that voting for the 'other side' requires a lot. A lot of dissatisfaction, a lot of overcoming family traditions, close community traditions, one's basic beliefs, church, and basic views of the world. Depending on how these things are mixed, and how one sees the mix as a success or failure, requires more than a lot of experienced voters can manage when it comes to crossing over from one party or the other.

I expect the Republicans are just beginning the hard and troubling process of realignment. It took a new generation of Democrats to break down the gates, starting in 2005 with the young militants who dragged our party's pundits back to thinking like true liberals and convinced them to quit trying to out-play the Republicans by their rules. We didn't lose time after time for the past 28 years without good reasons, and we were just as prone to sticking to our failing ways as the Republicans are now.

While the Republicans are just starting to sort themselves out, they are as capable of swift change as we are, and I'm not convinced they will remain in the outer reaches for long. Sarah Palin wasn't the right person, but there are many other like her, but who are better and smarter, in the West. We haven't seen them yet, but they're there. All it will take is a newcomer with the same aspirational qualities Reagan and Obama had, combined with the right conservative philosophy. I expect to see a new person arise soon, and that person, because the West is changing so fast, may well come from my neck o' the woods.

There is one risk I don't see discussed here. The Democrats lost power because with their innovations came rising crime, more active protests, and generally a greater sense of chaos.

The same risk exists now for the same reasons: there is a huge demographic youth bulge in the population. So youth policies and crime policies are critical but it is also important to realize that aggregate crime will go up and that there will be other associated problems. Owning the dialogue for that now, looking at cohorts, is an important part in maintaining the progressive dominance in point of view.

I can think of no examples where a political movement lost power of long standing and immediately went on toward reform.

It almost always takes a second, harder lesson. Walter Mondale was that lesson a generation ago. Michael Foot was that lesson for the Labour Party of England (and it still took another 13 years for them to get back in).

The first impulse is always to be more what you are. And I think President Obama can take advantage of that. I think he already has, in bringing a significant amount of business support to his side.

For Democrats the challenge is to absorb these new people without becoming them. Reagan succeeded at that.

How do we turn today's "Obama Republicans" into regular Democrats without changing our principles? That's what we need to be working on here at MyDD.