>But Doug, you don't see the big picture. The Republicans in my judgement
>are in danger of imploding the way that the Canadian Tories, the
>British Tories, and the French right have all done in recent years.
This seems all too plausible to me. One of the most destructive things that happened to critical opinion in Britain is that everyone continued to concentrate their fire on the Tories even at the point when they were dead in the water ...and turned a blind eye to what was happening in the Blair Camp.
The left and the liberal press here was unapologetically pro-Blair, in the most embarrassingly fulsome terms. Now that he has turned out to be a monster, everyone is looking around uncertain of the monster that they have created. The spectre of the right waiting in the wings is a good way to prevent you from criticising the all-too real problem of the 'Third Way' that is launching its offensive against Iraq and any kind of dissent.
The impeachment is a stupid trick, but it indicates the Republicans' isolation rather than their confidence. That they should try to effect a change of government through legal means only indicates that they have lost faith in their ability to connect with the voters - which as far as I can see is justified.
The ideological collapse of the right is the greatest single influence on politics in the nineties, just as that of the left was in the eighties.
-- Jim heartfield