Too Many Hippies To Punch

What typically happens after a realigning election is that the public starts to become more comfortable with the views of the victorious party. That is also happening this year, despite the best efforts to paint this as a moment of bipartisan center-right ascendancy. And these shifts in public attitudes are occurring because people are speaking out, contra Hildebrand who want the DFHs to shut up and mind their manners. Support for gay marriage is up in the wake of public demonstrations against the passage of Prop. 8. Civil unions now have majority support, and even bigger majorities support full partnership rights to gay couples (that darn word "marriage" still offers problems to people, but that will change). 66 percent now believe gays ought to be able to serve in the military.

Similarly, some long-overdue public statements against the crushing embargo in Cuba has led to a shift in opinion even among Cuban-Americans, who now favor ending the embargo, suggesting that the right-wing political ideology of Cuban exiles is on the wane.

The poll, conducted by Florida International University's Institute for Public Opinion Research and funded by the Brookings Institution and the Cuba Study Group, indicates that 55 percent of those polled favor discontinuing the trade embargo imposed in 1962. Sixty-five percent favor reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba.

''The poll has an extraordinary historical importance,'' said Guarione Díaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, a nonpartisan advocacy group in Miami.

The results, particularly as they relate to the embargo, reflect ''the fact that the Cuban Americans who were born in the United States or left after 1980 do not have the same vision as those who came in the 60s,'' Díaz said.

I'd like to see some other opinion surveys on issues, be they cultural or policy-based, but I'd bet you'd see the same thing. This is a changing country with changing attitudes. The constant efforts to curry favor in official Washington by punching a hippie will be very damaging to anyone's political future.