eahhh. i've seen better.

So what exactly is Obama thinking with his cabinet picks?

Everyone from Joe Lieberman to Pat Buchanan is delighted with Obama’s top job choices. Joe says they’re “perfect”, which suggests Obama is doing something very, very wrong. Pundits are torn. Is Obama a closet centrist who sold us a bill of goods with all that ‘change’ stuff? Or is he a progressive who’s going to browbeat all his experienced Clintonians into doing his bidding.

My guess is the answer is neither. Obama said today that the ‘change’ is going to come from his desk and filter downwards, but that’s easier said than done. If Obama truly is a progressive (and he really needs to be to define this historical economic moment), a more likely outcome is that the cabinet could quickly descend into ideological squabbling as the President talks up real change, and the cabinet talk up real caution. Obama is known as a consensus builder. If the cabinet is moderate, the consensus will be moderate, and real ‘change’, well that will have to wait.

It would certainly help the President’s ‘change scenario’ that at least one of his major cabinet picks was someone, well, new. But there isn’t really one guy in the top team that offers a totally new perspective on anything at all. So far moderation and predictability has been the order of the day, except in the case of HRC for State, which strikes me more as either fear or plain stupidity.

Time will tell, of course. But there’s one word that definitely wouldn’t be used to describe the new cabinet.

And that’s transformative.

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Parties that lose badly in democratic societies are prone to soul-searching, but the GOP’s unabashed, self-serving venality, and loose coalition characteristics make it much more susceptible, and could lead to the long-term weakening of the party, even as the demographics of the nation turn against it. November 4th already showed that their hold on the electoral map is weakening, and that simply put, there aren’t enough white, “low-information” (now there’s a PC euphemism if ever I heard one) voters to push a Republican over the top. The party topped out at 46% and it’s going to get worse from there.

But as important as the numbers are, the fundamental problem with the GOP alliance is that the goals of both its values and business wings suffered fundamental political defeats. The business wing has seen its free market ideology fall apart in front of their eyes. The values voter was implicitly promised the end of Roe V Wade, only to see their hopes dashed once more. Naturally, each blames the other for their setbacks, rather than focusing on reality. The nation has begun to embrace the need for a social contract.

The delusion of the GOP’s two wings is a disaster for them both. The business wing will want to move to the centre, but would lose the tacit support of the values voter, who wants to move to the right, decoupling from the business wing. That fracture could send the Party into the wilderness. The options available to business are a lot simpler, realign with the ascendant Democrats to try and influence the new left-leaning policy direction. But for the values voter that is not an option. And here lies the trajectory of the story.

The values voter has never been open to compromise. Their politics is built on confrontation and resentment, filled with dreams of victory and humiliation. The poor rural, small town or exurban voter likes government handouts, but it likes its churches and guns more. And now they seem to have become a rump – albeit a large one, focused on the South. According to the New York Times today, many people seem to think that the days of the Southern Strategy are over, which means that the Values voter is losing power.

When that happens, desperation can set it in. And when it does, so can thoughts of going down in a blaze of glory, like with a new third party. Perhaps even a Christian Values Party.

Now there’s an idea.

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