| Sumario: | The U.S. has experienced eras of single-party dominance before, but if President George W. Bush is reelected in 2004, America will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in the political system itself that would be unprecedented. Although American voters remain closely divided, and in fact prefer more Democratic policy positions than Republican ones, the drift toward an engineered one-party Republican state has aroused scant press scrutiny or widespread popular protest. A combination of forces—Republican emasculation of legislative opposition in the House of Representatives, rigging of electoral rules to all but preclude the incumbent party's ejection by the voters, and installation of militantly conservative majorities in the federal courts—could well permit the Republicans to become the permanent party of autocratic government for at least a generation.
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