SAY IT AIN'T SO, GARY

Grover Norquist: The Republican Party's prophet of permanence. (Chris Suellentrop, July 7, 2003, Slate)

All those Greenies and Naderites who grumble about the permanent duopoly on political power in Washington, D.C., can take heart: It's over, according to an emerging consensus. The bad news: It's been replaced by a near-permanent monopoly. Of Republicans.

At least, that's the bad news for liberals if the new presumption of perpetual Republican dominance in Washington turns out to be correct. Although it's only a theory, it's one with a surprising number of adherents. Even parts of the left have begun to embrace it. But the idea's leading proponent is, unsurprisingly, a conservative: Grover Norquist, the longtime Rasputin of the right. "The Republicans are looking at decades of dominance in the House and Senate, and having the presidency with some regularity," Norquist told the New York Times last week. A few days earlier, he made the same point, with slightly less confidence, to CNBC Washington bureau chief and Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray: "For the next 10 years in the House and Senate, we're looking at Republican control." In the Washington Post last month, Norquist wrote of a "guarantee of united Republican government" that "has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term."

Actually, this whole theme really gained its sea legs when the well-respected and apparently non-partisan Gary Jacobsen wrote a piece for Political Science Quarterly in which he flatly stated that GOP congressional dominance is likely to last at least through this decade and that, as a matter of fact, the 2002 midterm election--popularly perceived as ahistorical, even shocking--was entirely in keeping with prevailing political norms. You can still debate whether such dominance is likely, but that it came from such an impartial source seems to have scared the beejeezus out of the Democrats. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 8, 2003 9:13 AM