There are lots of commentaries in the press and on television now about the future of the Republicans and the direction its party will take in the next couple of years (and specifically for the 2010 congressional election.)
Newt Gingrich on Face The Nation yesterday made it pretty clear that Sarah Palin was not the direction Republicans would go toward. Yet, Palin is getting lots of attention around the country, most recently at the Republican Governor’s Conference, and she doesn’t seem ready to let go of her anti-Obama and anti-Democratic statements.
Thomas Edsall, in a really good article on HuffPo, said:
The Grand Old Party, believing that the nation’s political geography has turned against them, is slinking away from the battleground once owned by moderate Republicans like Rockefeller, Saltonstall, Chaffee, Mathias, and Weld. Democrats in the meantime have worked up their nerve to go after states hitherto thought off limits. Harvard political scientist Steve Ansolabehere notes that Democrats “have been building infrastructure in states like Montana and North Carolina, and . . . remain competitive in the southern state legislatures.”
For over a decade, and most strikingly during the past two elections, the intensely anti-immigration stand of Republican House and Senate members, and their insulting rhetoric, has proven to be a loser. Republicans have lost House seats in predominately white Southwestern districts which conservatives believed would be a hotbed of anti-immigrant sentiment. In 1996, Republican mishandling of the immigration issue converted California into a reliably Democratic state, and now it looks as if the Republicans are on the road to repeating the feat in Florida, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and, potentially, Texas and Arizona.
And if there are any moderate (or even liberal) Republicans left in the world, they have been so destroyed by the conservative party members that they would either have to start a new party or, as many seem to be doing, become Democrats.
I watched Huckabee’s show on Fox last night for the first time and found an outpost for the Pro-Life (read “anti-women”) and completely Christian Republicans who are not going to go away soon and who will continue to let Democrats have control of the important issues of economy, security and diversity. As long as Republicans are ready to fragment the population, the Democrats will maintain their strength.
It will be interesting to see what the results are of today’s Obama-McCain meeting. If McCain becomes a leader under Obama on some of the issues they agree on, it will mark another point in the new Administrations unification of all citizens and leave the extreme conservatives either farther out.
This will be a day to watch.
Under The LobsterScope