It’s just weird that we keep seeing polls that show Republicans beating Democrats when the GOP is basically having a civil war within its ranks.
So what happens now, with the primary season ending, and the Tea Party having defined it? Does the Tea Party remake the G.O.P. in its image, staging a “hostile takeover,” as Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, the libertarian advocacy group, urged activists rallying outside the Capitol last weekend to do? Or will the Republican Party co-opt the Tea Party, as Trent Lott, a former leader of the Senate Republicans, said it must?
The embodiment of this question might be Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who has made himself and his Senate Conservatives Fund a kind of Tea Party Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Sitting at the intersection of the Republican Party and the Tea Party, Mr. DeMint could be a model for how the two might co-exist — or an example of how the drive for ideological purity could turn the Republicans into a niche party.
I guess the question is when the Republicans become a niche party. Will it be this November? Will it be in two years? Will it take longer than that?
I’m going with the Mayans: 2012.
If the lose, I think the party will break.
The polls that we are seeing are national polls. The parties are not uniformly distributed over the nation, and most elections are close to 50-50 anyway. The civil war among Republicans is among national aspirants and flares up in only a few locations, like Delaware, Alaska, or Utah.
Plus, the Republicans still depend on the 24/7 media Wurlitzer that penetrates into every last rural area of the country.
None of that predicts who will show up in specific states and Congressional districts to vote in November.
Those who are saying that Republicans are becoming a niche party need specify what niche they think Republicans are occupying. If they are the de facto White Peoples Party, akin the the South Africa diehard Afrikaner party, then that niche is fairly large. If they are the Christian Identity Party, that niche might be large as well.
The niches they risk losing are business (in areas where corporatist Dems court business) and country club Republicans who don’t like mixing with the rabble. The South Carolina governor’s race is where the first is true. Even with all of the blatant racism and obnoxious antics, the Tea Party crowd doesn’t seem to have alienated the country club Republicans yet.
The Republicans become a niche party when the public perceives them to have lost big. And not even the Goldwater loss did that. At which point, they have to reconstitute the coalition.
Well, one way to become niche is to basically have no chance in the Electoral College. Now, we’ve lost some landslide presidential elections, but going into them you wouldn’t say that McGovern, Mondale, or Dukakis had no chance. Yet, that could soon be the case for the Republicans if the Southwest becomes solidly blue and they don’t make a comeback in the Upper Midwest.
The GOP can win in Ohio and Michigan in low turnout midterms, but can they win statewide there with Jim DeMint as the face of their party?
I don’t think they can.
I keep hearing rumors of Texas going blue at some point relatively soon.
Jim DeMint is not likely to be the face of their party. Tim Pawlenty is more likely than Jim DeMint. And Newtie is still around trying to be relevant. They are not going to go for a grumpy Newt, and that is what DeMint is.
I like your analysis of what a niche party is.
I understand about the Upper Midwest.
But I am curious what states you see as becoming solidly blue in the Southwest. There is New Mexico and Nevada (if you place it in the Southwest). Arizona is not likely to turn blue unless lightning strikes and Glassman beats McCain.
Well, actually McGovern never stood much of a chance in 1972….and given the state of the economy in 1984 and 1988, Mondale and Dukakis were always long shots, but that’s a side point.
I think that as long as Democrats can hold onto around 40% of the white vote, Republicans will increasingly become, if not a niche party, at least a minority party.
As for the Electoral College, take the 2008 map and plot the changing demographics (new census figures coming out next year). The Northeast, the Great Lakes/upper Mississippi river (except Indiana?), the Pacific (except Alaska) all look pretty solidly Democratic. Obama started picking apart the South by winning Virginia and North Carolina. The “browning of America” flipped Florida, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico in 2008. I don’t know the specifics, but Arizona and Texas may become “purple states” in a few more years for the same reason. That leaves Republicans with much of the South (but without its biggest electoral vote prizes) and the Great Plains.
When/if that happens, then I imagine Republicans would have to go through a learning process on race and ethnicity similar to the one Democrats have been through over the past 40-50 years. (Note: they’ve already started with Steele’s election as party chairman and with the Bush brothers’ governance in Florida and Texas.) That, combined with shifting racial/ethnic self-definitions will create a new Republican majority—but hopefully not until sometime deep into the century.
I always thought that if the Dems nominated somebody with a little more life and fight in 1988 that they had a bit more of a chance. Dukakis just wasn’t a very good candidate. Maybe Hart without the Donna Rice difficulty would have won it.
I’d love to see a projection of the electoral vote in 2012 if Obama gets the same % of each ethnic group, factoring in of course projected demographic growth.
“… not even the Goldwater loss did that.”
That was indeed a major loss but the GOP in those days was an incomparably more stable entity than it is today, and a lot more voters identified as Republicans than now.
And although we don’t think of it that way now, Nixon – and believe it or not, Agnew – represented a major turn back toward the center from Goldwater in the minds of the contemporary GOP.
I think it depends on how they do this November.
If they make the gains everyone is saying they will make – take control of the House and nearly take control of the Senate – then the backlash against their crazy will be seen in the 2012 election.
If they don’t make the gains, particularly if they don’t take control of either branch of Congress…the epic meltdown could happen as early as next year.
The only way I see them holding together longer than 2012 is if a Republican wins the White House…
We’ve seen them perform this dance before. The GOP occasionally has spasms of disunity, but at election time most of them pull the same lever.
I’m sorry, this just makes me laugh. This woman is a joke!
Sarah Palin Calls Karl Rove a “Good Old Boy”
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/09/will-delaware-slow-the-tea-parties.html
BTW Rove walked it back
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201009160007
Is there anymore dispute, that Sarah Palin and Rushbo is now the Leaders of the GOP?
The GOP will become a fringe party when the evil libruhls put anti-psychotics in the drinking water.
I’m betting they’ll be around long enough to do some real damage.
some interesting commentary:
Lord Help Us, Palin Is Running For President
Didn’t conventional wisdom have the GOP well on the way to becoming only a regional (southern) party just a short time ago?
I have the same feeling of being bamboozled that I had in the months before the invasion of Iraq.
“I Shall Call Her Mini-Me: Sarah Palin advises Christine O’Donnell”
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/77733/i-shall-call-her-mimi-me#comments“ rel=”nofollow”
Seriously, read the whole conversation. It’s worth it!
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/09/invitation-and-open-hand-to.html
“Niche” implies a market segment and a cultural mindset, and as of now the media is overwhelmingly determined to present the GOP as a serious, middle-of-the-road alternative. And then there’s FOX, and frustrating as it is, a lot of people watch FOX news.
So the question to me is, how long will it take for reality to percolate through the media noise, and will it ever happen?
So the question to me is, how long will it take for reality to percolate through the media noise, and will it ever happen?
Not in my lifetime.
Republicans fall in line. They always do. In 2008 the GOP was at a low point, but they managed to exert a significant amount of power not by their numbers in Congress but by their party discipline. I’m with you Booman- unless we reform our electoral institutions, there’s always going to be a party on the right that has a huge say over how and what things get done. In the short-term we need to fight to make sure that party stays out of power, but in the long term the most important thing is that that party is a responsible, good-faith actor that accepts the post-war consensus.
The conservative party in Congress is relative. For most of the 1980s, it was liberal and moderate Democrats who were saying how and what things got done. They even got “Read my lips” Bush to sign a tax bill.
I’m not sure that either party knows what the “post-war consensus” is or what war. What we need is a new consensus on what are legitimate process actions. And what constitutes bad faith.
Agreed on process, but not so much on substance.
On substance, we need to get back to the agreement that we don’t start wars of aggression and that we don’t torture people in our custody.
On the domestic front, we have obviously made strides in policy but somehow lost the messaging war while getting legislation passed. We need to continue to fight on the message front to demonstrate that the legislation that passed is good and should be strengthened rather than eviscerated.
The latest Poll from Politico has Democrats and Republicans tied:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42247.html
In a generic matchup between the two parties, those surveyed were split 43-43 when asked if they would back a Republican or a Democrat on Election Day.
Actually it’s not just Politico.
A number of polls have come out in the last 36 hours, most of which look measurably better for the Dems than recent soundings have. The GWU poll shows the two sides tied. PPP shows a 1 point Dem advantage. CBS/NYT shows a 2 point GOP advantage.