For years the Republicans have been champions of Federalism and the Democrats have been trying to have the Federal Government bring the States into national conformity. Now that Republicans control Congress and judicial nominees, we are likely to see those who favor and oppose Federalism switch sides.

The Republicans seem to be more aggressive at consolidating their new found power than Democrats are in holding onto theirs. For example, ramming through redistricting off cycle in Texas. Another example is the threat of the “Nuclear Option” underscores that collegiality and continuity are not more important to the current Republican leadership than partisan interests.

The Supreme Court is also moving in that direction and will do so decisively once there are a few more Republican appointees on the Court. Conditional federal spending like the No Child Left Behind Act largely invalidate any state independence of the sort granted in Lopez which lined out criminal, education and family law as provinces of the States. (I am surprised that no state has made it a felony to be a three-term Senator. That would test whether criminal law really is something a state can do and potentially allow term limits for federal officials to move forward.)

As red state policy becomes federal law, it will be more and more difficult for blue states to maintain their independent policies. There is a narrow window while Republican legislators and the Republican judiciary has not fully internalized the polarity switch. During this time, Democrats can try to cement Federalism before Republicans realize they no longer need this issue.

My guess is that the time for Federalism has passed and that Democrats will convert to Federalism more slowly than Republicans convert away from it. I look forward to reading how the Supreme Court Justices and some of the more self-important partisan publications will justify their newly-found interests in the opposite sides of the Federalism debate.

I’ve made this point before, but it seems I have to point it out almost continually. Glenn discusses Bush’s current (relatively) low approval rating. This number is, to me, almost always politically meaningless, though the pundits always want to freight it with inappropriately great import. The underlying thesis, of course, is that since the president’s approval ratings are low, this somehow represents a great opportunity for the Democrats, and that if only the numbers had been like this back in the fall, John Kerry would have been swept into office.

Nonsense.

It may be an opportunity for some theoretical Democrat party–one to which I might even in that bizarro universe belong, and for whose candidates I’d vote. But not in this universe, not with Moveon.org, and Howard Dean, and Ted Kennedy continuing to call the shots. The mindless assumption that unhappiness with one major party translates into happiness with the other continues to pervade the conventional wisdom, but consider:

I was very happy that Al Gore was not elected president in 2000. Ecstatically, almost deliriously happy. And this was even before September 11–that event just made me all the more relieved. But on any day of the Bush presidency since he took the oath of office, if you’d asked me if I approve his performance, I’d say no. On free trade, on government spending, on education, on his faux support for the “assault-weapons” ban, on any number of things, I strongly disagree with his stances and disapprove of his presidency. But since I’m not offered anything better from the other party, this is meaningless in terms of his theoretical electoral prospects, or even in terms of his getting my support on initiatives with which I agree.

Since the conventional wisdom is that Bush is a “conservative” and a “right winger” (though if a Donkey president had pushed through many of the things that this president has, e.g., the education bill co-developed with Ted Kennedy, or the huge Medicare enlargement via the prescription drug benefit, the press and the Democrats would be praising him and them to the skies), then the assumption is that unhappiness with him is unhappiness with the “conservativeness” and “right-winginess” of his proposals, and that the solution to improving his “approval” rating is to “move to the center.” The explanation rarely seems to take into account that the unhappiness may be due to lack of diligence in executing his “right-wing” proposals, or that in fact (as was the case with, for example, the education bill, or steel tariffs), they aren’t “right-wing” at all. The fact that many libertarians’ and self-identifying conservatives’ unhappiness might be dragging down his numbers never seems to occur to these people.

Of course, that might be one of the reasons that their electoral prognostications often turn out to be so wrong…