Permanent Majorities

An essay about how the media looks at tiny and impermanent trends to project such absurdities as the "New Deal Democrat" and "Small Government Republican" and how there is now a "Permanent Republican Majority".
2004 election results supposedly revealed deep culture-war differences concerning religion that sealed the Republicans' permanent majority status... But what a difference a year makes. According to the Washington chattering class, Bush and the Republicans' governing majority are suddenly but surely in decline.
The centerpiece of the essay is the following comments:
There is only one problem with this latest conventional political wisdom. It is, like the conventional political wisdom that immediately preceded it, almost completely wrong in virtually every respect...Conservative Republicans, beset by deep ideological divisions, are not even close to becoming the country's permanent ruling class... Just the same, neither the GOP nor the president is in any definite long-term political trouble. Conservative Republicans, even without permanent-majority clout, are still more potent politically than liberal Democrats, and likely to remain so.

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