A MODEST PROPOSAL

The SOBs can't do anything else right, but at this they never fail (and we never succeed):

... The Republican National Committee, convinced that Chafee is the party's only chance of keeping a seat in a Democratic-leaning state, spent $400,000 to ship 86 out-of-state volunteers and several paid staff members to Rhode Island. They targeted not just Republicans but also independent voters during the final days of the campaign....

"Their turnout operation is exquisite," a senior Democratic strategist said. "We are not going to match them."

...Events this week put the GOP edge in sharp relief. While the RNC was fine-tuning its "microtargeting" program in Rhode Island, Democrats were announcing they had finally resolved a months-long dispute between Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) over a budget for mobilizing voters.

...Some party leaders privately acknowledge that House Democrats in particular are only beginning to put in place an operation to turn out voters and that Republicans are many months ahead in planning....

You know what? There's really only one solution. We have to give up on the Democratic Party.

And become Republicans.

I mean it. All of us, en masse -- voters, bloggers, candidates, everyone but the idiots who run things. If we're going to have one-party government in this country for the foreseeable future -- which certainly seems to be the case -- we should at least join that one party.

I'm not saying we should change our beliefs. I'm saying we should bring those beliefs into the GOP and start fighting to win elections within it -- not burdened by the albatross that is the inept, incompetent Democratic Party. Expecting the Democrats to get their act their act together is like waiting for vinyl LPs to make a comeback, or DOS computers, or WordPerfect -- it ain't gonna happen. So let's move on.

Obviously, the existence of Lincoln Chafee (and of people like Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller on our side) proves that the ideological boundaries are a tad flexible. We just might have to bend them a bit more.

We know that people such as Chafee, Christie Whitman, and John Danforth have expressed despair at the shift in their party's ideological balance to the extreme right. So far, they're having very little success in tipping it the other way. Well, we can help tip it. A lot.

Primaries will be the equivalent to general elections -- just as they are in one-party bastions all over the country. Competition will be still be fierce; debate will still be lively. But this way, we won't be guaranteed to fall short on Election Day.

Anyone have a better idea?