On Friday's PBS NewsHour, the 2014 election results were so hard to dismiss that even pseudo-conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks admitted that he's been part of the chorus that the Republicans were too extreme and outdated, "even I have said some of that." But with these results, Republicans "are the dominant party in this country right now."
BROOKS: They control two-thirds of the governorships. They have never had, at least not in the last century, this many state legislators, this many legislators in all the different states. They control unprecedented levels of state legislators. They have now got a farm team across the country of rising politicians who will rise.
And so they have become, with two-thirds control of all these states, these governorships and now majority control in both houses of Congress, the governing, the dominant governing party in the country.
And what they do with it remain to be seen, but a lot of people have said, oh, the Republican is so extreme, it’s a dinosaur, and I have even said some of that, over-relying on some of the demographics. But they are the dominant party in this country right now. And how can you be out of the mainstream if you dominate that much?
Mark Shields implausibly claimed this should be a "golden left-wing moment" for America, but the Democrats don't have "even the twinkle of a big agenda":
SHIELDS: I just think it’s — for Democrats, it’s a terrible, terrible, crushing defeat, and one that leaves them, I hope, engaged in serious introspection, because they went through a campaign where they had no economic message.
The core problem for the Democrats is that they have — they’re intellectually exhausted. They have a diagnosis of a big problem of inequality. They have — they’re on the heels of a financial crisis caused in part by Wall Street. This should be a golden left-wing moment. This should be a progressive moment in this country.
And they don’t have even the twinkle of a big agenda. And they don’t — the instrument they rely on, government, is mistrusted. And so it’s not a progressive era, but this should be a big left-wing era, if they had a set of ideas.
Brooks concluded: "Well, politically, they obviously made a mistake by thinking demographics could carry them along the way and they didn’t actually need issues. And that was a consultants’ fantasy. And that hurt the Democrats."
Brooks normally spins the week on NPR's All Things Considered on Friday nights as well. For a look at how NPR tried not to absorb the theme of GOP dominance at all, check out NPR anchor Robert Siegel making the entire segment about how those dastardly Republicans aren't going to bend on amnesty for illegal aliens. Ramesh Ponnuru mildly made the conservative case, but failed to note some victorious Republicans did well among Latinos.
Dear NPR and Siegel: You look silly trashing conservatives as unyielding when you can't concede Republicans won at the polls. Will NPR be moving its programming more to the center now? Ha! So they should just shut up and stop being hypocrites about extremists failing to do the will of the people and compromise.
