The Republican party is in shambles. It lost the presidency, at least 6 seats and possibly as many as 9 in the Senate, and 20 or so house seats this last election. More importantly, perhaps, it lost young voters, who voted Democrat by a margin of two to one. The next group of voters, those currently in high school, are largely Democrats. The only age group that McCain won are the very oldest voters.
Hispanics were another group who broke heavily blue, largely because of the rhetoric of bigots like Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado). If the Democrats managed to pass some sort of immigration reform, this portion of the electorate will not only expand even faster, but they will owe a debt to the Democratic party that will not be forgotten. Look at the way African-Americans have been reliable since the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s, and you’ll have an idea of what’s to come.
Some are suggesting that the Republican Party is now doomed, either to completely collapse like the Whig and Federalist parties of the 19th century, or to shrink to being an almost purely Southern party. I think that’s highly unlikely, although it could, theoretically, break that way. The power today’s big two political parties have is substantial. On the state level, parties adapt to whatever the local situation is, whether that means Republicans becoming liberal or Democrats becoming conservative. In short, they evolve to survive. That’s the long term picture: A party will exist to oppose the Democrats, and that party will want to have the power of a major party to use state election systems to run its primaries and such, and therefore, that party will be called the Republican Party.
But, as we know, evolution is a long process.
I think the rough outline of a party to oppose the Democrats is clear enough. About half of Americans think the government should do more, about half think it should do less. The Dems are clearly the party of more, so the opposition needs to be the party of less. It’s a role the Republicans have largely abandoned recently, but it needs to be the party of small government.
The short term prospects, however, do not look good. A rather small minority of the country, but a majority of Republicans, think that the party simply isn’t conservative enough. The passage of Proposition 8 will lure Republicans into running on an anti-gay rights platform, but the demographic distribution on that issue is even more skewed by age than the overall Democrat-Republican split, and so there’s no long term future there. Fox News and talk radio have allowed the Republicans to become a party full of people who listen almost exclusively to other Republican voices. Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will pull the party further to the right, and to failure.
The key to the question of how long Republicans will spend in the wilderness is whether they continue to have primaries in states that allow independents to vote in either party’s primaries. If they do, the primary process will continue to pull at least their presidential candidate towards the center, and electability. If they start clamping down on that, and many of them would like to, the country will be divided into two groups; Democrats and Independents, making up 70+% of the country on the one side, and Republicans making up the ever shrinking remainder.
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2 comments:
I have some doubts as to whether the non-Democratic party will be called Republican, simply because of the power of marketing. It may be that the name "Republican" has or will be too much of a liability. Then again, the Democratic party of the 1960s is not the Democratic party of today, so who knows what might happen.
Another possibility that occurred to me recently is that if the GOP becomes the southern party of right-wing extremists, and the Democrats become the party of everyone else, then it may become too big to contain its constituency. It might be the Democratic party that splits from internal tensions.
The idea of one party rule fissioning is a pretty likely result of one party rule, I agree. One party rule isn't very likely on the state level, I don't think, but it's possible.
I don't think the word "Republican" is likely to become a long term liability. People will forget W, or at least put him into context. Even if St. Ronald were to lose his sanctified status, and I think is name still gets positive reactions from most Americans, any reformers that might come into being will still find it useful to claim the mantle of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
We'll see. We certainly live in interesting times.
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