Schisms

Here are the beginnings of the inevitable ideological schisms that ought to take a bite out of Republican party unity, as a consequence of their electoral windfall. Both among neoconservatives
(and it's interesting to note that the objection here is that the ideological vanguard suffers from the same "immunity to disconfirmation" of Bush backers as a whole) and then among the Republican majority over abortion. In some ways, the party's fantastic unity may have been a consequence of its being in the minority for so long as much as its being a representation of the single largest cultural bloc. Perhaps it's comforting that nothing tears a political party in half quite like ascendancy. If gridlock means government inaction, it's something conservatives can support.

I wonder if Kerry could have focused his criticism of the war and appealed to conservative intuitions if he described it with phrases like "social engineering", "nation-building", and "utopianism".