2012 year was been quite a storm. Three hundred sixty-six days in a cyclone with fierce weather on all fronts: an economy tossing around in fits and starts; politics stalled by fog and precipitation, with heavy rains arriving in the fall to wash away Republican hopes of winning the White House and both houses of Congress.
What about the coming year?
No doubt we will again find ourselves at year’s end shaking our heads and contemplating what has happened, especially the unexpected.
Here are a few of my educated guesses – and a bit of speculation – about what 2013 has in store.
• In the fullness of time, following the New Year’s celebration, leaders of the conservative-dominated GOP (Republicans Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are in tears) will prostrate themselves and acknowledge that the unceremonious rejection of Republicans on election night had nothing to do with the “gifts” Mitt Romney charged were given to the “47 percent” of Americans by President Barack Obama but, rather, that 63 million Americans didn’t think much of a political brand that has been hijacked by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, the tea party and other assorted right-wingers.
Following that cathartic event, intraparty bloodletting will begin.
• Sarah Palin will try her hand at a series of economic, domestic and foreign policy speeches to signal a presidential run in 2016. Media will be ecstatic. Party stalwarts will be apoplectic.
• Democrats will launch a ground war singularly focused on retaking the House in 2014. Nancy Pelosi, accompanied by a surprise combatant, President Barack Obama, will lead the charge.
• After the Biden task force report is released in January, there will be more shooting sprees and mass murders, followed by heated debates over gun control and mental illness, followed by more shooting sprees and mass murders. An assault-weapons ban will squeak by. But bodies will keep falling.
• Spring will come early.
Colbert I. King is a former deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post.
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