Polls this far out from an election aren’t dispositive of much of anything, but it’s telling that Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma has only a narrow lead over her Democratic challenger while Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York is absolutely trouncing his Republican opponent.
I have a theory that when the Republican Party finally collapses as a national party it will happen suddenly and without much warning. It could happen as early as this November, although I am not ready to make that prediction just yet. If it does happen this year, though, this is what it will look like. Incumbent Republican governors will lose across the board, from Florida to Maine to Pennsylvania to Michigan to Ohio to Wisconsin. At the same time, the GOP will fail to pick up more than one or two Senate seats, failing to win seats even in Deep South states like Georgia, Arkansas, and Louisiana. And they’ll lose control of the House by surrendering seats that are designed to be invulnerable. The popular vote will run heavily against them and the damage will only be mitigated by the way the maps have been drawn and the tendency of liberals to cluster together in urban areas.
Then, the party will fail to coalesce around a candidate who is willing to make terms with where the country actually is on women’s issues, immigration, education, climate, or gay rights, leading them to nominate someone as far outside of the mainstream as the party faithful. Think Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, or even Paul Ryan.
This would probably lead to the kind of Electoral College defeat experienced by Walter Mondale or George McGovern, with numerous “red states” crossing over to vote for sanity. And, at this point, the GOP would be reduced back down to where they were in the mid to early sixties. To come back, they’d need the left to fracture in 1968 fashion.
This is where we’re headed. It could come as soon as November, although it could also be delayed into the latter half of the twenties. A lot will depend on economic and international conditions on each coming election day, and the GOP has a lot of artificial advantages plus a willingness to engage in various forms of suppression and chicanery. But the game is nonetheless up. The best movement conservatism can hope for at this point is a flash in the pan confluence of bad news timed at just the right moment to give them the unlikeliest of national victories. This country has totally moved on from their ideology.
