As David Broder notes, the Republican Party has been, at least temporarily, reduced to a rump party with little appeal to minorities, and bleak prospects in future national elections.
In the end, Obama flipped nine states that had gone for Bush — Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico in the West; Ohio, Indiana and Iowa in the Midwest; and Virginia, North Carolina and Florida in the Southeast. That left Republicans with a shrunken base in the South and the border states, where rural and Appalachian counties delivered for the GOP, and on the Plains, where population is falling compared with the rest of the nation. That is not a formula for future success. As [Republican consultant, Steve] Lombardo concluded, “Given the demographic trends in the country, the GOP is unlikely to win any future presidential elections if it is losing 95 percent of the black vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote.”
The 2008 cycle was a particularly bad one for the GOP with blacks and Latinos. The combination of Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, the anti-Latino ravings of the lunatic right (culminating in Palinism), and the cratering economy, created a perfect storm. By the end of the campaign, GOP rallies were hard to distinguish from National Front hatefests. It’s likely that future election cycles will be less hostile to the GOP’s chances.
On the other hand, facing off against an urban, Ivy-League educated African-American (whose middle name is Hussein) with a white mother (who remarried a Muslim and spent a stint in Indonesia)…well…that allowed the GOP and their base to unleash a panoply of suppressed demons on the electorate as a whole. They attacked miscegenation, they attacked single mothers, they attacked intellectual (and coastal) elites, they attacked cosmopolitanism, they attacked Islam, they attacked the black church, they even attacked fame.
Their only real accomplishment in all this was to lose a generation of youthful voters that have zero patience for bashing people over their race, intelligence, sophistication, (or sexual orientation). The GOP (especially in its raw Palinist form) is a know-nothing party that denies science, is completely white-identity-centric, feeds off hate and fear of non-white-non-straight-non-Christian people, and will not win another national election until it changes completely.
Well, white-identity runs pretty deep in America, even in the well-intended…
I would have liked him better if he has an Elmo Jacket personally.
He dropped some truth in a Big Bird track jacket. What more could you want?
You are so right, BooMan. The Republicans are a Know Nothing Party representing the shadow side of the American psyche. I agree they will not win another presidential election until they accomplish a major-major overhaul. Who knows, perhaps they will follow the Whigs on the road to extinction. With Palin at their standard bearer, I suspect this road to oblivion will become a super highway.
I’m afraid this isn’t true. Because people don’t tend to vote parties into power, they vote corrupt and/or useless parties out of power. That’s not just true of the US – that’s true of democracies all over the world. As long as the ruling party doesn’t tip from “not bad enough” to “bad enough” they can retain power. Once they make that tip, they get thrown out an a new party is put in power.
The Republicans have crowed for years about how their ideas were what made them popular among the voters. But really they’ve been riding on a few things – outrage from LBJ and the Democrats enacting civil rights in the 60s, outrage at the total mess that was Vietnam, and outrage at the handling of the energy/economic crisis in the 70s. Those things pushed the Republicans into power (slowly – Congress especially realigns very slowly, as do the states). (And yeah, Clinton was in there. But Clinton actually governed pretty much like a Republican who was actually interested in governing would govern. He didn’t really challenge the Republican way of doing things – he embraced it and took credit for it. I’ve often called him the “best Republican President since Eisenhower”, and I still stand by that assessment).
So what happened two years ago – and what carries forward now – is a new realignment based on new outrages that Republicans have ownership of. Iraq/Afghanistan and a new energy/ecnomic crisis are at the forefront, making for an eerie parallel to the Republican rise to power. The rest of the realignment is going to go slowly – much as the Republican realignment has for the last 30 years – but it will follow.
But eventually there will be NEW outrages directed at Democrats. The economy will tank again, and they’ll probably start another war eventually. (My guess is that we’re talking longer-term here – 20-30 years out). The Republican party could well make a comeback in that kind of environment regardless of whether they’ve turned themselves completely into a mouthbreathing party of know-nothings or they’ve come back in from the wilderness to become a sane party. It won’t matter – when the current party’s time in power is up they’ll be replaced by whatever party happens to be handy at the time.
Which is why I’m pretty desperate for Republicans to reform themselves. Maybe look back at the party of Eisenhower for inspiration (or even Nixon pre-Southern Strategy for the love of Grod). Because I’m only going to be in my fifties or sixties 20-30 years from now, and I’m not looking forward to the theocrats getting another turn at the wheel.
I’m sorry, but an anti-science, religiously retrograde, white-identity party is not going to win shit ever. But don’t worry, the GOP will figure that out in short order.
But don’t worry, the GOP will figure that out in short order.
Actually, if they keep going on “RINO hunts” and throwing the “impure” out of their party they may never figure it out.
But that would be fine – actually that’s best case as far as I can tell. Because if they do enough of that the business interests and those “RINOs” in the party will probably team up with some of the more conservative Dems and form a new national party. Hell call it the “Conservative Party” for some truth in advertising. If the crazy nutbase continues on the path they’re on, they won’t really give the “RINOs” any other choice.
What I’m worried about is that the fundies pull back enough and tone down the retrograde white-identity bullshit just enough for the party to become “respectable” again. They reach another compromise with the more moderate elements to reforge the Republican brand. That’s what worries me.
And I think that the white-identity stuff is the only bit that has to go, really, for the party to become a force again. There’s nothing about immigrants (or even, for that matter, African-Americans) that make them drift naturally towards the relatively more liberal Democratic party – it’s just that the Republican Party has been actively pushing them away for decades. If they jettison the white-identity part but keep the retrograde anti-science, theocratic bullshit they could remake the party in a decade or so as the same crappy party we have now, but with less racism. The less racism is good, but the rest of it still sucks.
I expect a split, if not a total splintering.
The theocrats will get more extreme. With their absolute convictions and hatred of anybody who is slightly different (centuries of burning heretics) and righteous zeal, we should see a few groups splinter off… just like the 300 varieties of Methodists. If a herd is big enough, it grows restive, and so many of these groups are single issue voters: gun control, abortion, immigration, or loathing of gays, minorities, women… and especially any other religion. A misogynist might not care about the right to own a bazooka or sniper scope. Somebody who’d cheerfully bomb an abortion clinic might not get worked up over Hispanics. They truly haven’t evolved (which might explain why they can accept a young earth scenario where humans ride dinosaurs into the sunrise, but can’t accept diverse opinions).
But the theocrats aren’t the only wing to this ill-assembled bird! (I’m picturing something out of mythology with 3 heads, 4 wings, and no sense of direction!)
The group of super-rich conservatives probably find the excesses of the Bush Administration abhorrent. How can Republicans spend so much money and get us so deeply into debt? They are supposed to grow and protect wealth. Can they wrest the “Republican” name away from the mouth-breathers? Is it too tainted by corruption? Even a comfortable sweater gets discarded if moth-eaten or filthy. If they choose to relabel themselves, it will probably be as “Federalists”, given the desired society credentials. Unless they are truly State’s Rightists, in which instance “Statesmen” might confer dignity, male perogative, and authority. They will want something that sounds traditional and historic and reassuring.
Campaigns take cash. A lot of it. I expect this wing to morph and survive.
If Romney was on the ballot, the Mormon Church probably wouldn’t have thrown the millions at Prop 8, but used the money and energy to elect him. However, that would have terrified the rest of the country. Could Palin or Huckabee raise enough money? Without inspiring the opposing side? Look at Dole’s “godless” ad… and how much Hagen raised the next week! A popular demagogue, with the backing of a major church, might be able to run a full campaign. I’m not sure that a hysterical extremist can raise the cash without also energizing the opposition. And that is a war where the only winners are the competing ad agencies.
You will notice that there is no discussion here of governing competently nor of representing the will of the people. Republicans have become so besotten of power that they forgot there was a job involved.
It’s all showbiz: Forget Red vs Blue, It’s the Educated vs People Easily Fooled By Propoganda
Adlai Stevenson would agree…