But Huckabee didn’t win when he was running, so what do you base that on?
A continued withering of the old Republican base. Huckabee ran a remarkably strong campaign. The Palin faction basically won the battle for the vp seat, and conservatives like Buckley are abandoning ship rather than fighting. Who do they have that’ll stand up to the social conservatives through four years of Obama?
I think people like Buckley and Will and Brooks don’t want to fight for Palin. That doesn’t mean in the long term they won’t fight against Obama. Heck, they’ll have extra cred by claiming that see? They had open minds but that darned Obama is just a liberal through-and-through.
Sure, but will they do it from inside or outside the GOP power structure? Outside seems more likely to me after Buckley’s firing.
They are all intellectuals, and conservatives of the old school with some self-respect. I don’t think they are jumping ship because of her social conservatism, but rather because they cannot fool themselves that she is even slightly qualified. Katherine Parker is another one. I definitely got the feeling from her interview with Colbert that she’s thinking of not voting for McCain.
I think a lot will depend on the exit poll breakdown. It is possible that the far right will draw the wagons into a circle and lose a bunch of elections before the party decides to move to the center. Or, enough of the leaders will see that catering to the right no longer works, and puts in a fix for a more moderate candidate - like the real Romney, before the flop flop. It is possible that an analysis will show that McCain could have won - or at least come close - if he had chosen to go after the independents, not the base. I’d say the far right will win because they have the primary voters locked up, but they couldn’t pull it off this year.
So I don’t think we can tell before we see the election results.
I think the new Republican power structure might come from outside the current one. I think people currently “in” are going to be seen as out of touch.
It will be interesting to see who takes the blame for the presumed loss. I can see the Christians saying the loss was due to McCain not being outspoken enough about old-time, Bible-thumping values while I can see the country clubbers pointing to Palin’s vapid religiosity as the cause of the loss. It could be war!
Or they’ll just blame it on the interminable war, the crappy economy and McCain’s erratic campaigning. Which would leave the 2012 nomination open to a Republican of virtually any stripe, since it’ll be a whole new ballgame!
My guess is Bush.
This is a guess!? 
I don’t see an obvious mechanism for an outsider takeover of the party. AFAICT, there’s no Reagan this time around, and no new moral majority to power such a bid.
Is this going to be the time, at last, for a viable third party? Made up of conservatives who aren’t part of the foaming-at-the-mouth religious right?
In Canada we have the Christian Heritage Party, made up of people who will probably be inviting Mrs. Palin to speak at some point. However, this party has never gone anywhere. It gives its adherents a place to hang out and I can’t see that it has much more going for it than that.
Mind you, Canada is a very different place. An avowedly “Christian Heritage Party” might succeed to some degree in the US. But could it succeed in electing a president?
I know I’m being dim, but I don’t get it.
The person I was addressing wondered who would take the blame. I think Bush is going to take the majority of the blame from the Republican side, which will mean that people tied to the Bush brand (like Karl Rove) will share in the disgrace.
Third party simply don’t work in the US. A takeover of one of the two extant big parties is still doable, though.
I’m just agreeing with you. If there’s one single thing that conservatives are known for, it’s their penchant to blame their troubles on someone else who is not a ‘true conservative’, like Bush.
It has happened once (Republicans taking over the Whigs’ second-party role), but only once.
See, told you I was dim. 
Anyone go to Free Republic lately? I’m curious what their spin is (other than blaming the media).
I think over the next three or four election cycles, the Republican party will move to the center and most of the religious right will be marginalized. If they don’t help win elections, why pander? Plus, the RR is an aging cohort, and they’re not getting replaced by young voters of like mindset (opinion, no cite).
The Republican party may well look for their own Obama, and that may catapult a candidate like Jindal or Cantor into a position of national prominence. I don’t think either of them could take down an incumbent Obama, but could make a lot of noise in 2016,
We are moving away from the millennium. I wonder how long it took the second coming/end of days movement to die down last time?
If you look at this election, you can clearly see people aren’t supporting Obama because he has a clue of what he’s doing. They simply hate GW Bush. This election is very similar to the Humphrey/Nixon 1968 election where sitting President Johnson was so unpopular people equated a vote for Humphrey as a note of support for Johnson.
Obama like Carter is getting in because people are sick of Republicans, not because any one Republican is weak.
This economy will take a minimum of one year to heal maybe as much as 3 years to get back where it was before, which wasn’t all that great. Obama will be facing reelection and someone will ask “are you better off now than four years ago?” If the economy continues to tank Obama won’t be reelected
That’s not clear at all, to me. If anything, it looks to me like there are folks on the one side who do think Obama knows what he’s doing, and folks on the other side who are voting Nobama.
If the economy will take “maybe as much as 3 years to get back where it was before”, then that implies that yes, it will be better in four years than it is now.