popular thinking

The initial post-election conventional wisdom has buzzed around moral values, red states, blue state elitism, messages vs. messengers, wartime presidencies, 527s, negative campaigning and the "evil genius" of Karl Rove.
But Rove said something revealing in his Sunday morning TV talk show rounds when he professed to believe in the grand traditions of the Grand Old Party -- limited government and protecting the individual's right to choice.
Hmmm. Does that jibe with the reality of the 21st Century Republican Party? Not if you look at an expanding government that seeks to limit choices in regards to marriage and reproduction. In those cases, the government is seen as the savoir (pun intended). Sure, the Republicans won the electoral debate by defining it to their advantage, as in Republicans will protect the family (Defense of Marriage), they'll protect your guns (Dems will take 'em from you) and they'll protect you from terrorists (while Dems will be "sensitive" about the matter). You can argue all day and night about these things, but the GOP won, in part, because the Democratic Party could not define those debates and many others to their advantage.
Those who think this country is bitterly divided weren't around to see what happened after the election of 1860. I believe it was called the Civil War. Although in the new South, they still refer to that war by an old name, the War of Northern Aggression. It's little wonder, then, that the "Massachusetts liberal" campaign shtick would appeal to voters throughout the South. That label has even farther-reaching emotional and psychological undertones to Southerners than a simple picture of the so-called "media elite" and their friends.
This election also may prove that Ralph Nader was right after all.
At the end of this campaign, some voters could not discern much difference between how Bush and Kerry would pursue the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and these voters decided to stick with the leader they knew rather than switch to a leader they still didn't really know.
And the Democrats never capitalized on the "two Americas" theme laid out by VP wannabe John Edwards. Instead, the class divide -- which is real and growing threat -- got trumped by the cultural divide.
Perhaps the true realignment today is not in favor of the Republicans, but rather, in favor of a new political party that may replace the Democrats -- as the Republicans had replaced the Whigs about 150 years ago.
Then again, I could just be writing this to rationalize my decision 12 years ago to write my Princeton senior thesis on third-party political strategies.
Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps Nader is right.