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The next Carter...or the next Reagan?
There have been posts on this forum suggesting that from last Tuesday's bitter defeat may come another renaissance of the Republican Party.
Some analysts disagree. For example, in this morning's edition of This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the panelists agreed that the success of the Reagan presidency won the GOP a generation of voters.
They argued that if the president-elect has a successful term (by their tone, they acted as if it were a done deal), the up and coming generation that supported the president-elect will be locked in as Democrats. (George Will in particular was dour about the GOP's prospects. I am hoping that someone will tell me what this guy brings to the dance besides the pleasure he takes in the sound of his own voice.)*
Then, it occurred to me. What if they got it wrong? What if the president that got the generation of Republican voters wasn't Reagan but Carter? By this I mean, Carter was the candidate of hope and change. His administration did not do well. Then the voters decided on Reagan and Dutch took it from there.
[* Were I prone to feelings of bitterness, I'd have started ranting incoherently at this point about media bias. But I believe that I've established the fact that I'm even tempered. (As the late Chick Hearn would have said, I'm angry all the time.)]
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