Thoughts on the Election Part II: Political Hyperbole

One of the weirder things I keep encountering is the idea that because the Republicans lost the election the end is somehow near for the GOP.  This just seems really silly to me, seeing as how the current political and economic situation obviously favored the Democrats and McCain still managed to carry 48 or so percent of the electorate.  That is really not a very big loss, all things considered.  The GOP will unquestionably survive a McCain loss and it is unlikely that a many of the 48% who voted conservative will be swayed over the next 4 years.  The Democrats won in a climate where it was extremely difficult for them to lose.  Surprise of the decade.

It is my inclination to attribute this hyperbolic jawing partially to the tendency of big media outlets to lean to the Left, but also because the media is in constant need of some sort of a story.  The imminent demise of the GOP sounds more interesting than asserting that the party is in a period of soul searching.  Really, its about as bad as Karl Rove claiming a few years ago that a permanent Republican majority had been formed in the United States.  Why even bother making statements like this?  Who believes something like that?

Another irritating phrase that keeps popping up is that Obama has "redrawn the electoral map."  Apparently, redrawing the electoral map consists of winning a majority of swing states by thin margins.  Plus winning North Carolina by an even thinner margin.  Its almost as though political analysts live in another dimension where polar extremes are the only options.  The massive amounts of ink spilled and pixels filled with generally useless overstatements reminds me chiefly of three things:  The gibbering Pluto from Inferno, Evelyn from All Hallows Eve, and this section from the Faerie Queene:

Therewith she spewd out of her filthy maw
    A floud of poyson horrible and blacke,
    Full of great lumpes of flesh and gobbets raw,
    Which stunck so vildly, that it forst him slacke
    His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe:
    Her vomit full of bookes and papers was,
    With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke,
    And creeping sought way in the weedy gras:
Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has.

Can we all agree to avoid silly hyperbole for a while?  At least until the emotions are decently cleared?  

Jason's List of Verboten Phrases That Are Gratingly Premature:

America has permanently moved Left. 

America is just now entering the new millennium.

We are entering a new age politically.

Politics as we know it has changed. 

The political map has been redrawn.

The GOP will have to move more to the Center in order to be competitive.