If only the Donks would . . .

Bill Bennett mentioned yesterday that he would try his hand at a Twenty-First Century manifesto for the Democrat party. I think Hugh Hewitt would try the same. Doubtless other bloggers and commentators have suggested it too.

"The Democrats could be a resurgent political force in the United States if only they would," [fill in the blank with your favorite killer policy prescription].

If only the Donkeys would embrace genuine tax reform and win back the small businessmen and the widows'n'orphans and the IRS victims. If only they'd pick up and run with Second Amendment rights, and recover their union rank-and-file base. If only they'd drop the pretense at Drug Warrior and stop incarcerating whole generations of black males. If only they'd give up their current infatuation with coastal elites and academics, and return to their roots among blue-collars and farmers.

If only. If only.

Every WUTT! reader has his favorite, the one sure thing that would turn the Donks' fortunes around. And I have mine.

It's not much.

Eminent domain abuse.

How better to reach out to Maw and Paw Heartland than to say "We Donkeys are really really upset, deeply livid in fact, that Big Corporations are suborning local governments into kicking ordinary people out of their houses to make way for condos, shopping malls, parking garages, and so forth. It's nothing but Corporate Welfare, and we Donks don't stand for it."

SayUncle is all over this, and so is the Institute for Justice.

None of the if-only policy proposals I've heard so far is utterly impossible for the Democrats, even an eminent-domain reform platform that runs afoul of the enviros, or a pro-gun platform that would hospitalize Chuck Schumer. Some Party leaders would be alienated, of course, but they'd come around, as they just might in '06 when Tom Daschle makes the rounds like a macabre breathing Marley's ghost and gets them thinking right about the fundamental problem, the only problem really, that of Staying In Office.

My greatest concern from all of this is that with such an opposition, the GOP can make a serious mistake and fail to realize it until it's too late. Like in the Colorado legislature this year, for example. From the point of view of individual rights and the free market, the GOP may be second-rate firemen, but the Donks are first-rate arsonists.





How about a little fire, Scarecrow?