Fred Barnes:
KARL ROVE SAID LAST YEAR that the question of realignment--whether Republicans have at last become the majority party--would be decided by the election of 2004. And it has. Even by the cautious reckoning of Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, Republicans now have both an operational majority in Washington (control of the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives) and an ideological majority in the country (51 percent popular vote for a center-right president). They also control a majority of governorships, a plurality of state legislatures, and are at rough parity with Democrats in the number of state legislators. Rove says that under Bush a "rolling realignment" favoring Republicans continues, and he's right. So Republican hegemony in America is now expected to last for years, maybe decades.
Decades? Try two years.
But what's more, Republicans in the Senate and House -- secure in their perpetual majorities -- instituted a long list of policies that dramatically discriminate against the minority party in both chambers. In the House, the minority is all but invisible. And in the Senate, the filibuster is all that's left keeping the minority party from utter irrelevance (and they tried to get rid of that).
Me, I said at the time that I wanted to see the filibuster gone. Now Republicans will get to use it to stymie the Democratic agenda, just like opponents of civil rights used it to bottleneck important civil rights legislation in the 60s. But oh well. It is what it is.
But here's the key -- every bit of anti-minority party legislation the GOP implemented these last 12 years better be kept intact by the new Democratic leadership. Let them reap what they sowed. They deserve every humiliation they designed for those in the minority status.
And stripped of their perks, forced to fire large number of staff, shunted off to the dingiest offices on Capitol Hill, let's hope more Republicans decide that life on K Street is more enjoyable than life in the minority.