2012 or Never

Never's fine. Jonathan Chait in NY Mag. A 'must read'.

Republicans are worried this election could be their last chance to stop history. This is fear talking. But not paranoia.

The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis — that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care — is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.

The GOP has reason to be scared. [...]

4 pages later, the last sentence:

[...] The deepest effect of Obama’s election upon the Republicans’ psyche has been to make them truly fear, for the first time since before Ronald Reagan, that the future is against them.

Kinda makes me wonder if the dinosaurs saw their end coming after the meteor hit.