The Republicans’ problem since has been that, while they were in the minority, it was possible for them to maintain a rather exaggerated image of their virtue. Actually put in charge, their true degree of corruption became evident, and the partisan realignment that might have resulted from ‘94 if they’d trod the straight and narrow was stillborn.

We’re now in a period of back and forth jockeying for position. While Democrats are probably going to end up in control of both elected branches after 2008, I rather doubt it will last.

nothing shmibertarian about Ron Paul, he’s the real thing.

This much is for sure true. Both parties have lots of different alternative futures encoded in their DNA. The Republicans have many ways to retool if they have a bad election in 08. Look at not just Schwarzenegger in California, but how Romney governed in Massachusetts.

What we’re seeing now isn’t the demise of the Repubs, it’s the end of the institutional disadvantage of the Democrats following the post-Civil Rights southern realignment.

Oh c’mon, bi, spare me the befuddled act. “Engaging the world in a new, multi-decade, sustained but low footprint way” means the US spends the next 40 or 50 years invading and occupying other countries and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, while endlessly congratulating itself on being the Earth’s last best hope for fundamental human decency.

And you claim to be knowledgeable about American politics. Sheesh.

“Surely the Republicans … have not communicated well enough (and have mismanaged aspects of) the need to engage the world in a new, multi-decade, sustained but low footprint way …”

Wha…?

= = =

Back to the initial topic: my totally back-of-the-envelope (N.B.) prediction is that the Republican Party will first transform itself into a semi-godless shmibertarian party a la Ron Paul, simply because as OoM has shewn us, shibertarianism seems to be the “in” thing nowadays. What happens from then on is a bigger question, but I’m guessing a couple of Democrats will get so disgruntled that they break off and form their own runaway party, and maybe the Republican Party will be forced to make themselves look like they’re socialists while they continue to be shmibertarians in practice.

(Well, I figured my prediction is pretty much like nu’s. So there.)

2. The balance of power within both parties is dynamic, and the identified national leadership may not follow the base that elected them, despite having used their energy in the campaign. Witness the impotent rage of the antiwar base at the Dem leadership inability / unwillingness to cut funds for Iraq or to bork Mukasey (sp?). Or see how the lip service top Republicans paid for the marriage amendment— which they probably knew is unrealistic and had no intention to pursue, once they got elected.

3. The sliver of the country between San Francisco and New York, overlooked as it is by our academic and journalistic lights, may not be aware that in liberal echo chambers the demise of the R party is felt to be imminent. Such is the tragedy of the left-wing intellectuals; they want to lead but the people are not following. The revolution started by Goldwater, arching through the Reagan years and completed in the Clinton era (welfare reform: yeah, baby!!) has been extraordinarily successful by any measure. American conservativism is different from the European version and neither ‘conservative’ nor ‘liberal’ mean the same when you cross the Atlantic. But fundamentally ours is a conservative nation and the coastal intellectuals (and the euro lefties with whom they commune) are divorced from this simple realization.

4. The best thing that can happen to the Republican party in the long run is to lose the 2008 pres election.
First, the Dems can get a fresh approach and will quickly get a taste of responsibility in a world that is quite different from the Clinton and Carter years. The Euro press the UN bureaucrats and other foreign standards that our liberal intelligentsia hold infallible will savage Hillary (or whomever) with the same invectives (and schadenfreude) they used on Bush (and Reagan before him). My observation is that for our foreign partners / rivals / enemies it makes no REAL difference who is in the WH. The partners will deal with us when it suits them, while the enemies hate us for who we are and what we stand for regardless of who the Pres is.

Second the Republicans can retreat to the think tanks and hopefully create a new set of policies and allow new leaders to emerge. Surely the Republicans have recently strayed from their bedrock small government, low taxes mythology; have not communicated well enough (and have mismanaged aspects of) the need to engage the world in a new, multi-decade, sustained but low footprint way (they tried but I don’t think they were effective); the optimistic message of Reagan is nowhere to be found.

Nevertheless, the need for a forward leaning security posture, managing globalization (and whithin it our main state-to-state relation, that with China), continuing to preserve free markets and the cultural optimism which is one of America’s most attractive soft powers are just some of the challenges that are here to stay. The Republicans will be back.

On the post topic: politically at least it seems absurdly premature to write off the Republican party. Schwarzenegger in CA shows one direction they can go—the upwardly mobile, up by your bootstraps, suburban business type who doesn’t trust government to raise taxes, but wants responsible government management in some core areas like the environment, infrastructure, (and increasingly) health care.

Indeed, most African Americans long to return to the day when locally-controlled school districts, election boards, and police forces struggled so hard to protect blacks from the heavy hand of the federal government and its mandates. Why they haven’t rushed to the party of Reagan, who gave a speech praising “states’ rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, remains a mystery for the ages. Especially with the winning campaign of, “No, no, we want to demonize other disgusting minority groups nowadays. Oh, you actually want to vote in Ohio? Well, fuck you.”

I think that long-term, the coalitions will be the lumpenproletariat (government dependents), the intelligentsia, and the rentiers(people whose wealth is inherited—trust-funders), vs the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

I’m trying to understand what you mean by “steadily moving rightward.”

I would agree that since say, 1976, there has been a long-term shift that could probably be called rightward.

However, there are some major exceptions from say, 1988 to 2008, that make me question your analysis.

1. The West Coast states beginning with CA and moving to OR and WA and likely on to CO and NV do not seem to be moving rightward to me.

2. Several large industrial states seem to have not moved rightward in the last 20 years (IL and NJ, first, then MI and PA, next.)

Although solidly democrat, I’ll grant that MA, NY, CT and the other northeastern states may actually have moved somewhat rightward over the 3 decades.

So, your argument would have to be that population movements to, and rightward shift in, the south and midwest more than compensate for the shift in the states I mentioned earlier.

I’m also curious what measures you are using to measure “conservative”.

If one is using conservative to mean “aligned with the cultural values of the past” then conservative would include racism and sexism and I don’t think you can show the country has become steadily MORE racist and sexist over time.

If you are using conservative as support for small government/small business I don’t think you can show any steady movement away from support for large corporations and large government institutions.

If you are using rightward to mean nationalist and militaristic, then I think you probably have a pretty good case. I think most of the disappointment with Iraq has been the lack of success rather than a disappointment with the enterprise as a whole. The military is still held in very high esteem and that certainly that has been a rightward trend over several years.

But maybe you mean something else entirely.

Why is it that so many right-wing blog-commenters seem so absolutely unable to comprehend that even in a long-standing two-party system such as we have in the US, party ideologies/identifications/appeals might change over time (and have)? I mean, Brett, from all the posts of his I’ve read at various blogs, seems just marginally honest enough to eschew the lame old “Party of Lincoln vs. Party of Slavery” trope – but just barely.

It seems sometimes that virtually every discussion of the partisan/electoral/racial balances in the US as they exist in 2007, has to contain some inapt historical reference to “traditional” voting blocs, as if the Jim Crow mentality was/is utterly unable to change (D) to -R) in its organizational affiliation, and that “racism” is merely some quaint relic of the forgotten past.

I think most of these divisive issues—including perpetual war—are invented by the Right to make it harder to keep our eyes on the ball.

The Right has recrafted America. It has ratcheted down taxes and run up a mindboggling debt at the same time it has favored policies that ratcheted down incomes. Republicans know if we can’t ratchet the incomes back up, we can’t afford to ratchet the taxes back up.

We can’t afford a functioning government, and Republicans purposely fail at governance to drive home the point that government isn’t worth paying for anyway.

/ehj2