, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

M, This colon convention gets out of hand after maybe two. 
I've just looked over the articles you suggested I might take an eye to. We will have something to discuss, I see. You don't take on small issues! Much more daring than I am. 
I can have more to say later, of course, but first impression sis that there may very well be POV objections to most of these on grounds of opinion. Now that's inevitable in any sort of political or historical analysis and the best anyone can probably do is scratch a little rhetorical dirt over the most blatant. It's the basis for academic debate in these disciplines. Politics, though, is important, not just scholasticim redux and so it's worth doing. Enough blather. 

I see a major problem in that your perspective is too temporally narrow, POV allegations aside. I trace the Big Break (realignment or whatever) in American politics to the Bull Moose. Until then, both the Republicans and Democrats were broad parties with support from all classes, regions, etc (well, the Solid South was an exception for the obvious racist reasons, but...). When Teddy took the Progressives out in 1912, he made Wilson's election nearly certain and more importantly in the longer run, many (most) of those folks never went back. Think of La Follette or George Norris or Hiram Johnson, progressives (small p) all, and all (I think) Republicans. They wouldn't have been important or comfortable in the GOP of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Taft (pere ou fils) and their intellectual descendents weren't. It was the Repuplicans who staged a generations long witch hunt for Commies and unAmericanism. Even thouhg it was an idiot Democrat who started HUAC (Martin Dies  and he had a Soviet spy (!) as a fellow member  Dickstein I think it was). but the GOP found the structure conveninet to use. 
Think Nixon from his first election, or the GOP tolerance for McCarthy, Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Bomber Bob Dornan from California, etc. The 'Rockefeller wing' (misnamed) of the GOP was the last remnant of the people Teddy had taken out. Goldwater just made the ideological contraction more evident/blatant/inescapable. he wasn't actually very much in tune with the modern conservatives now dominating the GOP. Too independent of a specific agenda. 

This leaves the Dems as the only broadly based party, but remember that old saw about belonging to no organized party, I'm a Democrat. That's a distortion of the historic American pattern of two substandtial widely based parties, plus some minors. Maybe that pattern is changing, or not, but it's abberrant.

Enough. Have to go anyway. Tell me whether anything I've said is of any use.  23:41