Gary, I’ll go along with you and John Davis this far: The Republicans moving to North Carolina are not Jesse Helms Republicans. But then we part company. Here’s why: Republicans and Democrats are highly polarized, ninety percent (election after election) vote for the major candidates of their party. More people vote ‘straight tickets’ today than twenty-years ago when Jim Hunt ran against Jesse Helms. So, I suspect the real impact of the new Republican voters will be in primaries, where they’re changing the Republican Party from the party of Jesse Helms to the party of Elizabeth Dole.

The greater challenge for Republicans (and Democrats) are the new Independent voters, who’ve replaced the ‘ticket splitters’ of the World War II generation as swing voters in elections. The old ‘ticket splitters’ were Democrats, rural, conservative and mostly men. The new Independents are urban, moderate and mostly women. They agree with many Republican stands on family values, but they also agree, strongly, with Democrats on issues like prescription drugs for their parents and education (they supported the lottery). At the end of recent elections roughly 15% of the voters have been undecided – and two-thirds were women. These are the new swing voters.

John also says the issue this election is the war – and Republicans can’t escape it. The polls certainly back him up. But the war may be the issue next election, too, and I hope, by then, Democrats won’t be able to escape it.

Republicans have made mistakes in Iraq (I’d argue, our biggest mistake wasn’t fighting the war – it was not winning it). But, at some point, hopefully, in the next election we are going to have a meaningful debate about the war. That won’t be easy for Republicans. We’re going to have to say, We’ve made mistakes, learned from them and here’s what we’re going to do differently.

Democrats face a tougher challenge. What happened to Senator Joe Lieberman is instructive. Senator Lieberman is no Republican sympathizer. He’s never hesitated to criticize Bush. He was Al Gore’s running mate. But because he recognized the threat of terrorism and the need to defeat the terrorists the ‘peace-wing’ in the Democratic Party bounced him out on his ear. But in the long run saying, If we stop fighting the terrorists will too, won’t cut the mustard. Because the threat of terrorism is not going away. Next election, the Democrats’ challenge may be convincing a large, and ascendant, group of their base voters that there is a war that needs to be fought and won. If Democrats can’t do that are voters likely to decide it’s prudent to ignore the threat of terrorism?

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