Three predictions for the Age of Obama

1. Fox News will go from strength to strength as the as the lone TV news outlet on earth not prostrating itself at the feet of the Dear Leader. Rush Limbaugh and the universe of conservative talk radio following in his wake will do quite nicely for themselves, for the same reasons. And maybe new, as yet unimagined conservative outlets will spring up, while pro-Democrat institutions like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Minneapolis Star-Tribune are thrashing about to keep their heads above water.

The pie has been sliced too thinly on one side, and barely at all on the other: practically the entirety of American news and entertainment media are Democrats, catering to the American and foreign elite; while the rest of the country is offered only a handful of alternatives. So some of the elite media will have to go by the wayside, and Fox News et al. will see their stock rise, if for no other reason than supply and demand.

2. Republicans will gain in the midterm elections of 2010. Which doesn't necessarily mean they will form a majority in either house of Congress, but a fellow could count on one hand the number of times American voters have rewarded the majority party in off-year elections in which that party held all the levers in Washington.

But what is more, institutional Democrat Party power goes well beyond the White House and supermajorities in the House and Senate. Democrats dominate the federal bureaucracy and most of the judiciary nationwide; Democrats maintain a stranglehold on American education -- K-12 and post-secondary; Democrats produce every jot of news in America save for Fox; and Democrats monopolize the sympathies of every American film producer, TV executive, writer and director, actor, and pop singer. In fact, it's considerably quicker to name the American institutions which are not dominated by Democrats: The United States Armed Forces, and churches. So it's not the most far-fetched forecast that by 2010, Americans will be in the mood again for a multiparty democratic society.

3. Sarah Pailn is a force to be reckoned with, but it's far too early to assume she'll bear the standard for Republicans in 2012. She has staked out a promising angle already, by refusing for her state the unheard of spending splurge which Obama assures us is the only way out. If the Bank of Obama adds $1-2 trillion a year to the national debt, cuts checks for every pet project in every municipality in America, and redefines "tax cuts" as welfare for people who pay no federal income tax -- after which the question arises of where did all that money go and what on earth have we got to show for it -- then an anti-spending reformist governor may become considerably more attractive.

But the list is long, and Palin is at this point damaged goods -- only partly her own doing, and largely the result of a "mainstream" press, which set out on a search-and-destroy mission for her the moment they noticed her addition to the McCain ticket had moved Barack Obama into second place in the September polling.

Chris Matthews is much more than an Obama idolator and Kennedy royalist; he is also capable of useful and neutral observations, one of which is that Americans typically vote for an "antidote" to the previous president. If that's right -- and obviously Obama represents "CHANGE" and "the other", exotic Euro-socialism and New Age social-engineering, and statist experimentation -- then a decent bet for next POTUS may be a boring old white-bread all-American limited government sort, of which there's quite a lot in the Republican Party.

There's Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts. (As an aside, the election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States has instantly rendered Mitt Romney's Mormonism mainstream.) Even Rudy Giuliani ought never be counted out. But the man to watch may just turn out to be Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina. He has been unusually vocal nationally for a governor of South Carolina, and is clearly crafting an identity for himself as an anti-spending, deficit-hawk, limited-government, managerial executive. He would be able to come at Obama in 2012 as the anti-Obama, with as much credibility as anyone I'm aware of. So, for my third and most speculative prediction: Sanford in 2012. (Bonus fourth and still more speculative prediction: Sanford-Palin in 2012.)