Things really started to unravel within the Republican collation when the cold war ended, but now they have completely fallen apart.
On the issues front, McCain tried to preform magic by appealing to both social conservatives and independents. He went too far to the right, the illusion disappeared, and independents are now supporting Obama. The party now only enjoys support from Republicans, which since the days of Regan has been a loosely held coalition of political factions (i.e. Neo-cons, libertarians and paleo-cons.)
In addition to this, there now appears to be a cultural split. Georgetown Republicans (that’s what people call George Will and Willaim F. Buckely types) want McCain to deliver a positive message on the economy and stop smearing Obama. Jizz Monkeys (the technical term for the Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh types) want McCain to step up the associations with Ayers and Rezko.
These two groups have tolerated each other before, but now McCain has gone too far with his appeal to the ignorant wing of the party. The Georgetown folks seem to be struggling to hold back their complete contempt for John McCain. The only thing stopping them from denouncing him outright is that it would be bad for the party as a whole.
If McCain keeps up his appeal to the Jizz Monkeys, he just might give Obama some Republican votes. Since the Wall Street crisis, Obama has won the support of white blue collar Democrats (the last Democratic demographic that wasn’t fully supporting Obama), and independents. He now has a chance to whittle away at McCain’s Republican base. A good politician might seize this moment by somehow appealing to Georgetown Republicans without compromising his platform. Or maybe Obama should just somehow fuel the contempt Georgetown folks have with the rest of their party. Is it possible for Obama to pull this off? Will he even attempt it?
The question is whether you think Republicans will turnout for Obama, or will they simply just stay home in disgust?
I think most of the ones who won’t vote for McCain will stay home. The exception might be Republicans in the eastern states, the remnants of the Rockefeller Republicans, who may, finally, switch parties.
I think the root cause of the conflict you’ve mentioned is not McCain, it is Bush. The right got their wish, one of them as president, a solid Republic majority in Congress, and popular support after 9/11. Instead of the paradise they were expecting, we have total disaster. The conflict comes from pointing fingers. Some, the true-blue Bushies, are trying to blame the hapless Dem minority for everything. The ones to the right of Bush are blaming him and Congress for not being true enough to conservative principles (though that would have surely gotten them kicked out of power before 2006.) The left wing have been mostly purged already.
We can see they are out of ideas. What’s McCain got? More tax cuts, and going negative. That’s the sign of a bankrupt party. In 1994 they were brimming with ideas, but having ideas and having ones that work are two different things.
I think there are inherint contradictions in the conservative movement that are coming to a head: on the one hand the party is for less government in people’s lives, but they are also the party that want to promote social conservative policies through the government. They are for small government but they also are for a gigantic military. They are for fiscal conservatism and personal responsibility, but also for bailouts; they want to privatize profits, but socialize accountability. Like communism, these inherint contradictions are unresolvable and the belief system is doomed to fail.
Wow. I saw Christopher Buckley being interviewed on CSPAN about his latest book, “Supreme Courtship.” IIRC, he strongly intimated that he would be voting for McCain. It seems that he has changed his mind since then.
I’ve followed politics for over 20 years. I’ve heard “The GOP is falling apart. The Dems are falling apart. The GOP is falling apart. The Dems are falling apart.” all that time. Assuming Obama gets elected, in 8-12 years, the Republicans might just again look like the glowing hope & people will once more be saying “The Dems are falling apart”.
One party gets in power, gets cushy & stagnant, and needs to be shaken up & regroup. That’s all that’s happening.
No, the economy is going into the shitter almost as bad as in 1929. Osama has not been killed or caught. 28 years ago, we were promised that good times would trickle down to the masses, real wages have gone down and a smaller percentage has health coverage. The masses that supported the bullshit of the Reagan revolution are now being asked to bail out billionaires in future tax payments. Reaganism is on life support and I am optimistic that its demise will be the only good thing to come of the current economic crisis. While there will in fact be a Republican party in the future, it is likely to be only people by W and Palin believers. The old Rockerfeller Republicans and Neo-cons are going to go elsewhere. The RRs will probably go Democrat. The Neo-cons, who knows.
I am no spring chicken and have also seen my fair share of elections…but when people in the Republican Party want absolutely nothing to do with “their” President currently in office and were almost gleeful there was a hurricane in Texas to use as an excuse for him not to physically show up for their convention, you know things are bad.
Of course Dems think Palin is ridiculous gimmick by McCain and woefully unqualified, but even many Republicans are openly wondering what the hell McCain was thinking when he picked her?
I almost pity McCain - trying to appease the religious right, along with the rest of the ultra-conservative base, and yet still trying to claim his status as a “maverick”. Somewhere on this board four years ago or so, I actually said of all the Republicans, McCain would be the one I respected most and wouldn’t be suicidal if he won. I still think if he got elected, he would ignore most of the crap he has been saying for the past few months and do whatever he wants to do. Unfortunately, I don’t think McCain remembers exactly what he “really” wants to do anymore, and my respect for him has tanked. My guess is a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
If McCain were still truly the maverick, he would have selected Lieberman as his VP and this election would look a lot different right now. I don’t like Lieberman, but it would have at least proven that McCain has the balls to stick to his guns and do what he thinks is right. Now he has Palin. Oh well. He had his chance and blew it.
My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that…
As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you.
Most likely, Obama will be elected and we’ll get a real Democratic majority in the legislature after the mid-term elections of 2010. They won’t be able to get us out of Iraq, or able to get Afghanistan fixed due to Iraq bleeding the necessary troops away from Afghanistan. They won’t be able to make travel and energy cheap again like it was before gas prices went above $2.00 a gallon. I don’t know if government intervention can fix the economy at this point, how long the recession will last or how bad it will get. In a nutshell, they won’t be able to fix everything that got busted during the Bush administration.
We won’t get a real nationalized healthcare, we will probably get some half-assed corporate welfare where the federal government subsidizes insurance, which is better than nothing, but it still pisses me off to think of some of my tax money going to the insurance companies as well as Halliburton. And the talk radio troglodytes will foam at the mouth about ‘creeping socialism’, like my Reagan-worshipping parents do.
The Republicans, maybe lead by Palin, if she doesn’t start the Religophrenic Xenophobe nutjob party, will use this ‘failure’ and the fear dujour to come back into power in eight to twelve years and will start fucking everything up again.
That’s assuming that Obama doesn’t get asassinated his first few months in office, and after hearing the coments from the crowd at the Palin & McCain speeches last week, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody tries it. I have full faith in Joe Biden to lead the nation, but I don’t think he would be the uniting, inspiring guy that Obama is.
This is the thing that worries me about the current political landscape, in which it’s looking like there might be a Democrat landslide (defined as controlling the Presidency and both chambers of Congress, with a filibuster-proof 60 Senate seats). Given the two-party system we have, IMO, it’s really bad for one of those parties to be in a position of such strength. That way lies much bad legislation, and I really don’t want a Democratic Party version of the last eight years. As delighted as I am that Republicans are getting their just rewards, I really hope they’ll get their party back in order, and sooner rather than later.
Even better, IMO, would be a massive shift to a non-nutter Libertarian party. Let the Republican brand die, with something better growing in its place.
There are issues which more and more young people care about which are not well aligned with current party lines, and old issues which the people who most fervently care about are dying off. We may be seeing a party realignment. So what if they have been saying it for 20 years, maybe has been going on for some time, and we will see it bear fruit soon.
The issues which more and more people care about are the green issues. These issues range from renewable energy, recycling and reuse, animal rights and species preservation, organic and locally grown food, and water conservation. The young people I trained with this summer saw single sided printing as wrong even when the print out was for code review. They are passionate about the environment and take steps in their life to do what they can. Neither party has this as part of their core platform. Also, more companies are finding that going green can result in cost savings, and that other companies, private groups, and parts of the government take into environmental impact and a company’s overall “greenness” when deciding on contracts. Stewardship of the earth is a Christian value, and I think it could get increased focus as that.
On the other side, gay marriage seems now to be on the road to a legal reality in more and more states. Those most passionately against homosexuality are dying off. The failure of Massachusetts to get together and amend their constitution to disallow gay marriage is telling, as is Connecticut’s recent ruling. No longer can homosexuals be painted as uniformly evil hedonists who have no thought for tomorrow other then find more ways to indulge in perversion and convert others to their sinful ways. The whole issue of gay marriage belies that. I think those passionately opposed to gay marriage and equal civil rights for gays numbers are dwindling.
I don’t know how, but I think it is now possible to patch together issues in order to get a different party that is still at or near a majority other than the Family Values, deregulation is good, strong defense (including a strong offense) coalition that now makes up the republican party.
I don’t remember who it was that said it (Mark Twain, perhaps?), but the phrase “Politicians are like diapers. They both need to be changed regularly, and for the same reasons” has always seemed like a good philosophy and should be applied not only to individual politicians, but the political parties as well.
If you’re no spring chicken, then you surely remember that LBJ didn’t show up for the Democratic Convention in 1968 - and for undeniably similar reasons.
And yet the Democratic Party still stands. Imagine that.
Of course there’s going to be a Republican party in the future. But that future Republican party is going to be a transformed Republican party. The hollow shell of the party has tremendous value. There’s no way a third party is going to take the place of the Republican party since what will happen is that all the people who would join that third party will instead join the Republican party and take it over.
Remember just a few years ago when Karl Rove used to talk about a permanent Republican majority?
The Republican party IS falling apart. It will eventually pull itself together in some new fashion, but the old Republican party that was an alliance of libertarians, the religious right, hawks, and corporate types is finished.
“Always on your ass, and usually full of shit”? Something like that.
I disagree with Friar Ted, in that this election will represent a sea-change in how the US Government is run. The right-wingnuts will continue to rant and rave, to steadily declining yet fanatical fanbases, the Republican party will be forced to reinvent itself, while the new bosses will work feverishly to fix our various ills and help save our civilization from collapse. At least that is my optimistic scenario.
Of course the GOP will survive, but I do hope the likely impending losses this year will cause many to reevaluate who they are and what their message is. If they do something like rally around someone like Palin than they will be making the same kind of mistake that was already created the current atmosphere of Republican misery, and dooming themselves to further losses in 2010 and 2012, unless Obama really screws stuff up. Even if Obama does screw up, rallying around Palin would be a short term fix, pandering only to their base, and in the long term their influence will still erode.