Silver's Republican Death Rattle

I found Silver's article particularly interesting and insightful but I've got a few comments about specific moments. First, his assertion that "it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore" in reference to his conversation with John Ziegler seems over the top but I think points to a larger media theme happening here.

It's difficult to look at the 2008 election as being anything other than a massive landslide victory for the Democrats. They reclaimed the Presidency and reasserted, even lengthened, their lead in Congress. By all counts, the Democrats dominated the Republican Party in every imaginable aspect, leading many to signal the death knell for the GOP. Yet, I'm not quite sure that I agree with Silver's assertion that "conservatives don't win elections anymore". To me, Silver's claim strikes me as a hot off the press over exaggeration, an idea that one election (or two if you want to include the 2006 midterms when the Democrats barely squeaked out a majority in the Senate) shows that conservatives don't win elections. Unless I'm mistaken, the GOP enjoyed a majority in Congress from 2000-2006 and had a President in the White House for that same duration, a President that was elected twice. To simply say that because of one horribly performing election cycle, that conservatives don't win elections seems foolish. One could argubly say that if one takes away the past two elections, Democrats had issues with finding themselves on the victorious side in recent times. Silver's claim is technically correct I guess, seeing as how the GOP has lost the past 2 national elections in 2006 and 2008, but to make such a broad sweeping statement rings hollow.

Yet, I don't believe that Silver is the only one pushing this idea. The media in general has the thought that the GOP is in serious trouble and for the short term at least, I agree. Yet, I'm not ready to start heaping the dirt on the coffin. In the long term, there is no telling how the GOP reacts to this election and with as many skilled political operatives on the right as the left, there is no reason to believe that the right won't bounce back in some way. If we need any other evidence that the Democrats Party, of which I'm a proud member, need not rest on their laurels, we need not only recognize the way that Karl Rove and his cronies essentially slapped us around for the past eight years. Its unfortunate for the Rover that he backed such a lame candidate in Bush but given some kind of live wire with, gasp!, intelligence and some legitimate national political experience, is it so hard to believe that he can't put another right winger in the White House in the near future?