Party Splitting Time

Everyone is accusing everyone else of splitting the party. On the Republican side it started with Mike Huckabee, who seemed to be splitting the evangelicals off from the economic and national-security conservatives. Then it was John McCain splitting national-security conservatives off and seeming to diss the economic conservatives and the social conservatives.

Then the Clinton tag team started playing gender cards and race cards within the Democratic Party by ridiculing and then polarizing Barack Obama.

Then the great Rush Limbaugh said that he might sit the election out if certain candidates won the Republican nomination. They know who they are.

Now Peggy Noonan says it’s all Bush’s fault. It was he that split the Republican Party.

George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

Look fellas, let’s cool it a little. This is primary season. This is the time when the parties are supposed to tear themselves apart. This is when the candidates try to get the 51 percent of the party that they need to win the nomination. This is beneficial. We get to find out what the party factions really think and what they are ready to vote for—or more likely vote against.

But we won’t really know if permanent damage was done until after the general election.

If the Democratic Party splits over Clinton v. Obama we’ll know about it in November. If the Republican Party splits over McCain, we’ll know it in November.

Things change. Great political coalitions form and then they break up. I’d say that, if anything, we are overdue for a major party split. And like earthquakes, you expect a big one when things have been quiet for too long.

I’d say that the Democrats are more vulnerable to a split. The fact is that blacks and Latinos don’t like each other. Something’s got to give as the animosity between blacks and Latinos starts to bite.

But what do I know?