Ha Ha, Newt Gingrich.

The New York Times has an interesting piece on the front page today, about the leftward drift of the younger generation.

Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.

They have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

Now would be a good time, I suppose, to trot out the over-used Churchill quote that a young person who is not liberal has no heart, an old person who is not a conservative having no common sense, or something to that effect. That wouldn't do this justice, however.

What we are seeing instead is a generational shift away from a conservatism gone batty. This goes further than a polling snapshot can realistically tell you. The simple fact is that on all the great issues of the day - Iraq, the environment, healthcare, the economy, the boundaries between liberty and security, the rule of law, church-state relations, scientific research, a woman's right to choose - conservatism has gone astray, offering no answers relevant to Americans. Conservatism has become a demented caricature of the 19th-century Church of Rome, clinging to its dogmas in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, and of popular rejection.

This is an interesting poll; even in the, at first jarring, finding that young Americans think the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion. At this point, a successful withdrawal would be likely to be called a success, I think.

Gingrich crowed in the 1990s about creating a new and permanent republican majority; so did, more gratingly, Karl Rove. It looks as if conservatism itself, with its prime exponent George W. Bush, got in the way of that.

Poetic justice, at least.

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