Last week's Watergate revelations got me thinking, again, about how cultural issues have cut against the Democrats from the days of Nixon onward. Since 1968, the increasing importance of these issues---from drugs to abortion to gay rights---has served to crack the mid-century Democratic coalition and led to ever-greater Republican political dominance.
It's an enduring frustration to me that even many on the right---hell, Tom DeLay himself, in the context of his attacks on Howard Dean---will pay at least occasional lip service to past Democratic leaders like Roosevelt, Truman and JFK, all of whom were far more "liberal" on economic issues than most modern Democrats; the explanation, I suppose, is that none of those past Democratic titans ever had to weigh in publicly about gay marriage or even whether or not they'd ever inhaled. For most in the kulturkampf krew, these issues far more than economic policy are prone to spike the blood pressure.
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