There are countless articles being written and conversations going on that address the GOP’s fall from power and the likely roads back. The Republican Party is particularly weak in the Northeast which is, obviously, a major population center. The road back in the Northeast is fairly obvious.
The GOP’s greatest advantage is the two-party system that almost guarantees that any Democratic loss is a Republican gain. The Republicans must recruit socially moderate-to-liberal candidates that are ready to pounce on the first sign of weakness in a Democratic office-holder. This is the mirror-image of what the Democrats have done in picking off southern seats in both the Senate and the House. Once the Republicans have reestablished a rump of socially moderate-liberal members, they’ll be back on the path to a viable national party.
If you look dispassionately at the two major parties, you’ll quickly realize that the Democrats have a demographic advantage. The Democrats are strong with Latinos and the youth-vote, and they’re on the more popular side of the social issues debate. If the Republicans continue on their present path, they’ll alienate growing populations within the electorate to such a degree that they will find themselves in a permanent minority status.
Unfortunately for their political strategists, the last two elections have wiped out their most moderate members. I don’t think it will be possible, in the short-term, for the Republicans to adapt their message successfully. The real change will come organically, as they slowly win back seats in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Upper Midwest. They can win some of those seats with typical conservatives, but only when a Democratic member slips up and causes some kind of scandal. The quicker path is to recruit socially moderate/liberal candidates that neutralize that disadvantage and allow the electorate to judge their choice on other issues.
This is how the Democrats won seats recently in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The base of the Democratic Party wasn’t enthusiastic about these Southern cultural conservatives, but they helped add to the Democratic majorities and they will eventually help the Democratic Party compete culturally in the South. Democrats would obviously prefer to win Southern seats with candidates that fully share the base’s values on cultural issues, and the Republicans are no different when it comes to the North and Northeast. But you can’t wait forever for something that may never come.
The Republican Party allowed themselves to become too homogeneous and they must adapt. Their current leaders are ill-suited to make the needed adjustments, but if they just recruit correctly the change will come about in an organic fashion. They’ll elect enough moderates to have the moderates begin to change the overall brand of the party. Once the brand changes sufficiently, the Republicans will be a viable national party again. I don’t see any way they can accomplish this in the next four years, but they can get started.
And now I am done advising Republicans.
It’s going to be a long time before that happens. The party is more conservative than ever, the base is more conservative than ever, and they are a party fully driven by their rural evangelical base. The Northeast is a fairly cosmopolitan region – even in rural areas like Vermont and Maine – and don’t really take kindly to practicing the art of ignorance that the GOP has perfected on the national level.
Now they are consigned to a deep minority in the House, and really don’t have any hope of recapturing the Senate for several electoral cycles (barring any monumental screwup by the Obama administration). And if the best names they are pitching for 2012 president are still Romney, Huckabee, and Palin…come on. Bobby Jindal and Charlie Crist are the only real contenders, who might come off favorably in a national light at first glance, but the former is a rabid wingnut despite his educational pedigree, while the latter will have rumors of teh gay chasing him at every stop, even if he marries his beard.
So the search is on for the “soul” of the GOP. Did they ever really have one? There might have been a fleeting shadow back when Ike was president and he warned us of the menace of the MIC in his final address. We all know how that worked out.
It will be interesting to watch as the scramble for power and influence unfolds.
Usually, in these situations, the wingnuts take over because their remaining leaders are from the most conservative parts of the country. McCain and othe will quickly become discredited. Independents/moderates have given up on them. The evangelicals will take over and will subject all new members/candidates to moral issues tests. All appeals for moderation or a more inclusive strategy will fall o deaf ears. Big business will depart to ingratiate itself with the democrats. It could be a long tome and a lot of bitter defeats before the realisation dawns that the END IS NOT NIGH and they have to start addressing the real concerns of real people again.
I just have a really hard time visualizing some revolutionary new synergy between the evangelical base and what remains of the intellectual, fiscally conservative part of the Republican Party. I just cannot see the current base peacefully coexisting in any way with moderation. Moderation, by its definition, requires some flexibility, tolerance and the ability to take into consideration both sides of an argument in order to achieve consensus. And that is just not a trait that exists organically in the evangelicals. Their world, by and large, is simply too black and white.
I am sure it will be sorted out over time by the power brokers who emerge from within their party, but it is apparent the earth of the Republican world will need to be scorched bare in order for any new, positive growth to take place. I don’t think they can afford the luxury of the time it will take to try and repair and refurbish their existing political mechanism. It has proven to be fatally flawed.
I am expecting a party split. The New England fiscal conservatives may well form this party – they might as well – they have nothing to lose, and the Republican name is so muddied that they might no longer wish to be associated with it.
If this happens, then there will be interest in other parts of the country.
I expect at least initially there will be sniping about the need to maintain party unity, and how votes for 3rd party candidates are a ‘waste’, but the animosity is too great to pull it back together again.
How many of the New England fiscal conservatives are true moderates, and how many of them are Club For Growth whackos?
Having a new party that is devoid of the fundamentalist whackos isn’t all that helpful if what we get is a party consumed by worshipers of the Invisible Hand instead.
And since the Democrats have basically moved so much to the center on fiscal issues, there’s not a lot of room to run to the right of them and not start to fall into the whacko camp, since the Blue Dog caucus is about where Republicans were prior to Gingrich/Bush.
I think the internal battle will be bloody and fairly protracted. But I don’t think either side, in the end, will go for a third party. They both know that they are mutually dependent on each other. And to have any chance of success in the near term they have to find a way to once again forge an alliance between the factions.
The interesting thing will be if the evangelical leadership is willing to cede a bit of their power and influence in order to try and draw back into the fold the masses in the middle who have run like hell from their nuttiness. Both sides are probably screwed without the active and enthusiastic participation of the other. I don’t think the fiscal wing of the party will be willing to once again hand over the keys for the GOP bus to the fundies. And the fundies fought for nearly two generations to achieve their current level of political power and influence. They have tasted the sweet fruit of power, and will not give it up willingly.
Stock up on popcorn. It’s likely to be a long movie.
I have to agree with you. INTOLERANCE is one of the key features of the rabid Republican base. They hate too many groups, and ostracize whole communities, even if they occasionally admire an individual.
The biggest problem is the interference of religion into what ought to be a secular government for all peoples. Why do our candidates have to parade their faith? Go to a church for photo ops? Let bible-thumpers write party planks? Earn the approval of pulpited bigots and their broadcast network? This affects the Democrats, too, but not quite to the extreme extent that the Republicans are infected. (Religious Fervor is a plague that will kill its host… but sickens all around in the meanwhile.)
Yes, Obama went to the Saddleback debate. McCain cheated. Warren helped McCain cheat. Did that Trial by Word help prove Obama’s Christianity? Nope. Half the evangelicals still think he is a Muslim! And what the hell does that have to do with good government? Or character? Or competence?
We’ll forgive wholesale murder and ethnic cleansing… overlook the robbery of the Treasury and the corruption of no-bid contracts and cronyism in every last damned agency of the Government (one key reason WHY LIEBERMAN MUST GO is the total failure to hold a single Committee meeting)… let the infrastructure crumble into dust without raising a peep. However, let somebody get caught with a teenage boy or a high-priced whore and the entire nation gets their own panties in a twist.
Republicans claim they stand for “the sanctity of life”, but that is absolute bullshit. They wage illegal wars, including torture and secret prisons. They support the death penalty. They ignore starving and sick children here in America, and let disabled vets sleep in their own urine or under bridges. They buy arsenals of assault weapons and give guns to their children for Christmas. They even support forced sterilization of poor black women or the mentally disabled, under the rubric that it will reduce crime. Death and more death. What else can be expected out of a people who celebrate an imaginary victimhood?
Is “life” only esteemed, guarded, valued while it is unformed potential in a womb?
It isn’t that they hold eggs and sperms and zygotes as sacred, but that they want to control all sex and reproduction for the entire populace. If Catholics and Mormons are reproducing like rabbits, but the rest of the country isn’t, maybe they’ll become the homogenous lily white society they long for: all listening to the same damned preacher telling them who to vote for and where to shop and how much to tithe. Unthinking, because the thinking is done for them.
We’ve had a thousand years of Church and State being joined like authoritarian twins. It is enough!!!
Unfortunately for Republicans, good governance is more than controlling marriage and childbirth. Until they learn fiscal responsibility, accountability, management, negotiation, and how to prioritize long term results with short term needs… they will remain out of power. And good riddance.
When they stop yapping about sexual matters and start thinking about climate change, local jobs, education, clean renewable energy, and ways to make peace with the rest of the world… then we can perhaps consider letting them back into the corridors of power.
If they want to commit to a theocracy run by end-timers, they can stay in the frosty fringes until they become as frozen as those mammoths.
The Club for Growth throws huge money into primaries, funding fundie wackadoodles. You say nothing about this influence, Boo. I agree they need more moderates, but we are Democrats. For the wackadoodles, they are not sufficiently pure and true to conservawackdoodlehood. That’s what the push will be for the next several rounds – more conservawackadoodles, more fundie True Religion.
As long as Republicans like Georgia Rep. Paul Broun are making comments like these about Obama:
…then they deserve nothing more then their rapidly cementing status as a far-right violent fringe party of hate.
That is an entirllely rational suggestion…that contradicts the essense of what it has meant to be a Republican these last 30 year or so. They. Have systematically elimnated their own moderate wing and I see no chance of them changing course before they become a regonal party limited to Mississippi, Alabama and Utah. Their raison d’être – elimination of the New Deal and the Great Society (the welfare state) is a non-starter today. Until they find a new reason for existing then I forsee double-digit losses in the House on the regular, plus a veto-proof Senate…