Why You Should Not Listen to Me

I'm not always right. Far from it.

But be that as it may, we may now be in a situation where the Republican Party is about to, in essence, commit suicide by means of a "Banzai charge."

This is why: I think we are seeing a generational shift in progress. The polling in California has shown that the proposal to pass a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is far closer than it would have been a decade before, or even four years before. The data I have seen indicates that among young people, there is far more tolerance and acceptance of gay people than there is from their parents and their grandparents. The same also holds true for race and gender. Other than the throwbacks such as Phyllis Schlafly, the debate as to whether or not women belong in the military is over. And it seems pretty clear that it was young Democrats who turned out for Barack Obama.

The Republican allies of John McCain (like the allies of Hillary Clinton) can be counted on to run a campaign that will be little more sophisticated than references that decode to "ohmigawd, it's the nigras." When coupled with the "here come the fags" campaign that the radical religious Right will try to run in California, the GOP is positioning itself to be the party of the 20th Century, if not the 19th. (The irony of this is that McCain possibly may be one of the few Republicans who understands the trap the party is falling into.)

Those days are over, though echoes still reverberate. If the GOP sticks to its decades-old policies of racism and gay-bashing, it will consign itself to a near-permanent minority party, until the day comes when a new generation of Republicans throws out the old ones, as the Radical Right did when they got rid of the moderates.

But as I said at the outset, my track record on this stuff isn't exactly stellar.