For decades Democratic candidates have only been able to win elections by dividing voters into special interest groups, making promises to serve those interests and then falling short of keeping those promises once in office. This perpetual promising has kept all those groups in the party's political pocket - call it a coalition of the compulsively conned - but after 2 years of single party rule by Democrats with virtually none of those special promises kept, the coalition is crumbling.

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Of course politicians from all parties make (and sometimes break) promises, but Democrats have been making and breaking the same promises to the same groups election cycle after election cycle. What now passes for liberalism is luring various groups of Americans into voting for Democrats in exchange for lip service about issues that really matter to those voters.

The problem is basic mathematics. If a politician (or an entire party of politicians) promises to further the specific cause of one specific group and the members of that group believe the promise, that politician will get most of the votes from that group. If that politician makes similar promises about other causes to other groups, he/she will get most of the votes from all those groups. It's a common and effective path to getting elected.

But once in office, keeping a promise made to a comparatively small group of voters can alienate the majority of voters who may not support that particular cause. That would seriously diminish the chance of that elected official being re-elected which is the primary goal of most incumbents. So the promise gets broken, excuses are made and often accepted because they come with more of the same promises that will be broken after the next election.

In past campaigns, the con men and women of the Democratic Party have been able to point the finger of blame at their political opponents; fooling their marks into believing that all their legislative dreams would have come true if it weren't for those evil Republicans. But with the Democrats' overwhelming majority of both houses of Congress since 2006 and a Democratic president in office since 2008, there is no boogeyman to blame. The only reason all those promises to all those special interest groups were not kept is because the Democrats chose not to keep them.

So the unions didn't get Card Check, Hispanic voters didn't get immigration reform, gay voters didn't get a repeal of 'don't ask don't tell', young voters didn't get employment opportunities and voters who believed that past US policies were to blame for terrorist attacks against us didn't get the international embrace they were promised as a result of the apology and appeasement policies of the current administration.

These are just some of the groups that are shifting away from the big government fairy tales and toward more real world solutions and just some of the promises repeatedly made and broken by Democrats. Rick Garcia, director of public policy for LGBT rights group Equality Illinois summed up the shift this way: "People were clamoring and very excited about the change that then-candidate Obama promised America. Now I see lethargy at best and disgust at worst." (source)

While members of these special interest groups are not likely to instantly become Republicans, they are rethinking their blind allegiance to the Democratic Party in its current form and that's good news for them and for the country.