Two Scoops of Mark Steyn

Two Mark Steyn columns since the election, and I link to both, first this one, from which I excerpt this:

"On election day, I was driving through Vermont and found myself behind a car with a Kerry-Edwards sticker and an Instead of Being Born Again, Why Not Grow Up? sticker. Fair enough, the feeling's mutual: the secular, coastal, libertine Democratic Party has zero appeal to born-again Christians. The problem is the crude numbers: 40 per cent of Americans identify themselves as born-again. So right there you've written off 40 per cent of the electorate. What have you got in return? The gay vote? Five per cent? And Bush got a quarter of that."

and then the second, from which I have culled this delicious bit:

"The Democratic party have got themselves out of step with a huge chunk of the population. They’d probably do well in Belgium and much of southern England, but unfortunately neither of those jurisdictions is a US state. And, in the places which are, the party is increasingly uncompetitive. None of its issues resonates with rural America, and most of them — abortion and race-baiting — just sound stale: Selma, Alabam’ is 40 years old, Roe vs Wade is 30 years old, and the scare talk about Bush’s Supreme Court appointees just doesn’t work. The party is intellectually exhausted and short of talent, which is how a vain, mediocre senator ended up with the nomination. There are still enough tribal Democrats to make it impossible for even the worst candidate to fall below 40 per cent, but they’re so concentrated in New England, New York and California that the party can’t break beyond that. Hence, the White House, Senate and House in Republican hands."