Nothing is so hypocritical as associating religious issues with nothing more than abortion, homosexuality and public declarations of piety. Huckabee is no better than the rest of his party in that regard.

"Good luck to the whole gang."

Bad luck to them from me. America needs at least one credible opposition party, and the GOP isn't it. They need to break up and destroy themselves. Maybe then a decent party will rise from the ashes (so to speak).

It might be helpful to remember that the Whigs returned as the Republicans in 1860 and, except for Andrew Johnson, who was never elected to the office, controlled the White House for the next 25 years.

With best regards to Nat:

The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid

Once again Steve, you've got this wrong. The GOP leadership has never fought hard for the wingnut right issues. They've TALKED about them, but haven't ever done much of anything. Their problem is the suckers are wising up.

The faustian bargin between the liberterians and the religious right is coming to an end. The religious right is tired of their issues being placed on the back burner and the rank and file liberterians are tired of being associated with the wingnuts.

The question is, what comes out of all this in the end. The small gov fiscal conservatives are abandoning the reps for dems pulling the dems to the right on fiscal issues.

If they stick with the religious/ignoramus right the coutry clubbers will leave and the party will consist of a bunch of old, gray-haired people sitting around the kitchen table popping heart meds and drinking iced sweet tea and wondering what happended to the country.

The far right actually believes the GOP should move further to the right in order to return to relevance. They distrust any information that does not arrive through their chosen sources. They avoid associating with those who do not share their world view. As far as everything they know, nearly everyone strongly agrees with them. Contrary evidence is attributed to evil conspiracies of a liberal media, George Soros and Acorn.

The basic problem for the GOP is they have handed over the keys to people who make extraordinary efforts to reject the social, political, and even physical realities of the world around them. The GOP does not need a rebranding so much as they need reformulated.

Obviously, leaving the party reins in the hands of lunatics is not going to help them. A quick fix with some shiney new slogans won't do them much better. What they need is a thorough, frame off restoration. They need to be rebuilt from the tires to the roof. That's not likely to happen as long as the mere suggestion is widely viewed as heresy. I'm thinking one more electoral drubbing and the idea might start to carry some weight. If not, Whigs indeed.

Not at all accurate to say "the Whigs returned as the Republicans." In fact, in 1852 the Whigs simply came apart on the issue of slavery. (The deaths that year of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, the two most prominent Whigs, didn't help matters.) The anti-slavery Whig faction denied the party's nomination to incumbent Whig president Millard Fillmore, but their own candidate (Winfield Scott) lost to Democrat Franklin Pierce.

The Republicans -- mostly comprised of some (almost entirely Northern) Whigs -- then emerged in 1856 as a firmly anti-slavery party with John Fremont as its first White House candidate.

Given that the Huckabees among us are constantly comparing abortion to slavery, it wouldn't surprise me if Huck expects some variant of the above to happen in our own time, producing a new party that is more rather than less attuned to his priorities.

I think the right should divide into different parties. There could be the moderate Republicans, a small but influential group; the Whigs, a Southern party restricted to white males, and the religious conservatives (Christian Conservatives) who might try building the tower of Babel. Then they could fight it out for the hearts and minds of 20% of the country's voting population.

"They've TALKED about them, but haven't ever done much of anything."

Except for strong emphasis on abstinence-only sex ed, heavy-handed restrictions on abortion and stem cell research, major (and often successful) attempts to outlaw marriage equality, various resolutions in state congresses (and even the federal one) to "protect" Christianity from persecution...

But except for all that, nothing.

Yes, good luck and good riddance to the unholy alliance of religio-corporate authoritarianism. As a social service professional I have over and over worked to understand the mechanisms behind the folks, and the movement, that brought America to its knees. And the best I can come up with is exactly that - these are small people, psychically, emotionally, cognitively, interpersonally small people, whose only chance at relevance in a rapidly changing world is to try and reduce the world to their own shrunken level.

And as always, I think American 'conservatives' operate on a kernel of truth, that cultures and societies are indeed hierarchical. Where American 'conservatives' are wrong (I know, conservative/wrong/redundant) is that said hierarchies are not ontological but functional. So American 'conservatives' lie, screech, squeal, steal, manipulate, degrade, destroy, and kill in order to Peter Principle their way to the top of what they perceive as a social Darwinist food chain, to pathetically and desperately assert their relevance in a world which structurally left them behind decades ago.

You also have to deeply question the internal states of folks who rejoice in such “making small�; who revel in denying, belittling, obfuscating, subverting, lying, cheating, demeaning, stealing; who embrace till-my-face-turns-blue behaviors when a democratic society resoundingly and repeatedly rejects their fundamental ideological tenets; who cannot come to terms with demands and expectations lying outside an extremely narrow, predetermined and prejudicial worldview. In short, these are small people, incapable of internalizing or processing a world of infinite possibility. What our culture can do, then, is stop feeding delusions of grandiosity and impossible relevance; society is indeed functionally hierarchical, and as we now have incontrovertible evidence of the negative effects of folks in way over their heads trying to assert their relevance, this country has to ensure a climate of honest, open assessment and acceptance of role and place.

People used to mock Democrats for being a confused coalition of disparate elements. But, for the most part, those coalitions weren't polar opposites.

Republicans have been successful, because it has been able to merge 4 diametrically opposed groups on the national level:

blue collar vs the wealthy (and corporations)
and
social conservatives vs libertarians / "fiscally conservatives but socially liberal"

(and of course, the southern racist base)

There has been a lot of bleed through between these groups, obviously, fiscal conservatives can be blue collar and they can be rich, etc... but for some reason, right now, the lines between these groups are being drawn more sharply, more obviously, and they are beginning to notice that these groups do not share the same interests, in fact, they are fundamentally opposed to one another.

Why now? Lots of reasons. The religious right obviously came to ascendancy during the Bush administration and is no longer able to be on the down low, antagonizing the social liberals. For a contrast, look at the racist base of the party -- they have always been the dog-whistle faction, and some socially liberals friends of mine SWEAR that the Republican party is not racists and give me the "party of Lincoln" line. If you can keep your agenda under your hat, there is no intra-party political price to pay.

Secondly, there is an economic crash, so the blue collar guys are realizing they are better off with job, wage and health protections (and so are now at war with wealthy/corpoarte). Libertarians and true fiscal conservatives can't, with a straight face, say the Republican party represents anything they stand for.

And finally, a party in power can get away with shuffling money and favors to all groups. A party out of power has to come up with a coherent and strident counter message, and it has to pick one. Gingrich helped the Republicans come back with the promise of small government conservatism. But they can't get back to a unitary message without pissing someone off.

Someone pass the popcorn.

"They'll basically be a party of gray-haired old men sitting around the country club puffing cigars, sipping brandy and wondering whatever happened to the country."-Huckabee

Oops, a moment of clarity. An oligarchy married to a bunch of Christian bigots, indeed.

How's it feel to be a cheap whore used for all your worth, and now that you've gotten a little long in the tooth, cast aside by the brandy sippers looking for their next trophy wife, Huckabee?

A brain-dead reactionary conservative party that drew 20-25% of the vote could be quite powerful in a political system that wasn't as two-party-winner-take-all as ours is. The Nazis didn't need to do much better than that.

It's so easy to write off the party out of power, yet the fluidity of national politics can change the balance of power all too quickly.

All the Republicans need is a presidential candidate who can paper over the divisions between the party's diverse coalition. Charisma and the hope of winning can water down many an interest group's litmus test.

I also wouldn't underestimate the power symbolic gestures to an interest group. Rove and Co. road the fundamentalist horse for quite a few years. Love can be blind.

There's really no reason to think that the various factions of the Republican party won't submerge their differences in order to come together in 4 years time -- just as Democrats did in order to nominate and get behind the candidacy of John Kerry.

Remember that the biggest issue in 2004 was the failing war in Iraq (national security) and John Kerry was actually a PROPONENT of that war!

In short, Democrats ran a PRO-war Democrat as recently as 2004. That happened because opposition to Bush drowned every other consideration.

The same thing will happen in 2012. Republicans will all rally 94%+ behind whoever they perceive as their most "electable" nominee -- and it won't matter a fig what he believes. They won't care if he gives a wink and a nod to "moderate" positions -- ESPECIALLY on hot button social issues.

They will understand that, like Bush, he will say things like "I'm a compassionate conservative" without really meaning it.

But, they're likely to lose anyway and THEN what?

At that point starting in 2005 Democrats decided to return to their base ideals, and stop trying to be slightly less right-wing Republicans!

Now THAT worked. So, I expect there to be massive blood-letting in the Republican party, but it's not going to start in a serious way until 2013 -- AFTER Obama's re-election when the right-wing is FORCED to realize that power has moved sharply away from it.

Something similar happened to Democrats in 1985 when they realized that the Reagan Revolution was NOT going to be a short-term phenomena, and that they were going to have to deal with it!

First they tried Dukakis -- who ran as as a colorless technocrat who can "get the job done" only to be destroyed by "Willie Horton" style race-baiting on crime.

Then they tried Clinton who ran as a "New Democrat" -- i.e. fiscally conservative Democrat.

The Republicans will have to do the same thing -- run moderate Republicans who will swim against the seas of a progressive era by being socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.

They might win with such a strategy, as Clinton did, but the playing field is shifted dramatically in favor of Democrats and that's not going to change.

"...and the Republican party will be as irrelevant as the Whigs,"

I thought they were...

do not gloat over the republicans' problems. despite fielding an inferior ticket, they did manage to get 47 percent of the national vote in the last election. dr. lemming is right. the right candidate can put them back in the wh. arrogant governing by democrats could cost them congress.

unlike the split over slavery that killed the whigs, there isn't a single dominant issue on which a new party can be built. my guess is the various factions of the republican party eventually will patch their tent rather than fold it, because in the end there is no place else for them to go.

The faustian bargin between the liberterians and the religious right is coming to an end.
===================

So all the pledges of eternal loyalty from both sides were merely faustian fustian?

Too bad, so sad.

Just a minute. The Visalia Times-Delta?? That's how far Huckabee had to go to get his statement in print? Sounds to me like the old brandy-drinking men have already thrown him off the reservation.

Why anyone with any sense of demographics and history could not see that the "coalition" of corporatists, authoritarians, and social reactionaries, and Bible literalists would fracture in due course must have been willfully blind or more stupid than imaginable or arrogantly assuming that most people are even more stupid than that. But hard times have a way of concentrating the mind wonderfully (to paraphrase the good doctor Samuel Johnson) and those days are here.

What intrigues me is the question of what course an intelligent and politically viable new GOP might take. If there really is a consensus that the old ways will not work any more (and I'm not convinced that this is true quite yet), there are only a limited number of possible alternatives, and it is hard to see (at least for me) how any right-tending paths lead anywhere but back to square one for the Goposaurus (check out Americablog for this animal).

Small government? Too late.
Balanced budget? Not now, unless you want a great Depression.
Less regulation? Not likely after the latest Wall Street debacles.

So what else? Or is it just the failure of my liberal imagination?

I'll probably be a Dem till my dying day but I try to be realistic. Our main draw right now is a leader who is trying to be what the party always claims to aspire to be - compassionate but not naïve, smart but not arrogant, trying to make America better while acknowledging how tall an order that is. We rally behind the wrong person and, at best, mods and fair-weather Dems swing right. But if we get too big, it's just as possible the Dems split in twain, libs & mods separate, and our similarities are undone by our differences, leaving the right a chance to seem stable by comparison.

Nothing like being stuck between a rock and a hard place....

But in all seriousness, it points to the difficulty of trying to shoehorn four distinct political philosophies (socially liberal/economically liberal, socially liberal/economically conservative, socially conservative/economically liberal, socially conservative/economically conservative) into two poitical parties.

The real problem can be traced to the fact that we are pretty much the only democracy that using a winner-take-all system instead of proportional representation, and therefore has only two major political parties. Most other democracies have three or four major parties.

mudwall jackson wrote :"do not gloat over the republicans' problems. despite fielding an inferior ticket, they did manage to get 47 percent of the national vote in the last election."

while that's true, the only reason they got that much was the overwhelming support among whites without college degrees....obama lost that group by 20 points..[in the south and the mormon/militia triangle it was 40 points...]

if the gop loses their grip on the non-southern slice of that demographic, they have no shot at climbing back into a national race...

It is worth remembering that W got elected as a result of rebranding as a "compassionate conservative." A term that could now only be employed as either cynicism or snark.

The death of the Republican coalition is being greatly exaggerated. Its disparate elements have no where else to go and none of them, by themselves, have enough numbers to form a viable alternative party. The irony here is that both parties have spent so much energy over the years making sure that no third party could horn in at the trough that the threat by any disaffected segment of either of them to form a third party is laughable.

"Good luck to the whole gang."

Phooey! A pox on them all. Let the GOP go the way of Whigs and Federalists, as far as I'm concerned, and let's bid good riddance to bad rubbish.

I'd like to see the GOP continue their association with these issues. They courted the knuckle-draggers for whom these issues are important (at the expense of other people's humanity), and they deserve to be stuck with them a while longer. You gotta dance with them what brung ya.

"do not gloat over the republicans' problems. despite fielding an inferior ticket, they did manage to get 47 percent of the national vote in the last election."

As dj points out, this is largely due to identity politics. The GOP cleaned up among poor religious whites, particularly poor religious white men. As they always do.

The Democratic party, on the other hand, cleaned up among ethnic minorities and young people. And demographic shifting means that those groups are the future of America. In other words, America's future will be determined primarily by people who strongly tend democratic. That is going to be a fairly slow and gradual change, but still an inevitable one.

If the GOP is going to survive, they need to respond to this reality. They have to stop being the party of old white people and greedy plutocrats. And the way to do that is to actually deal with other people's issues rather than pretend that they're irrelevant or bad.

In other words, they have to moderate and deal with reality, two things they are bluntly refusing to do. Unless and until that changes, they will gradually become more and more irrelevant.

"unlike the split over slavery that killed the whigs, there isn't a single dominant issue on which a new party can be built."

You don't need a single dominant issue, you just need the right environment to force change. It's just political evolution. Weak parties will die out in favor of stronger fitter parties.

Just a minute. The Visalia Times-Delta?? That's how far Huckabee had to go to get his statement in print?
=================

Foolish commenter, you sneer in your ignorance at the Visalia Times-Delta, yet it is published fully six days a week and has a circulation!

Yes, a circulation! Over 19,309 copies! As many as fully 19,310!

the religious whack jobs need the republican party more than the republican party needs them. Without republicans using the religious whackjobs to distract from the republican plutocratic agenda, the religious whackos will not have anyone a means for anyone to listen to their political agenda. Its not an agenda anyone but them care about.

They have to stop being the party of old white people and greedy plutocrats.

Well, let's not get carried away, here! Greedy plutocrats will ALWAYS have a party. I'd rather they stick with the Republicans.

Who gives a shit? Really. Everyday now you've got some post about the republican party...what is wrong with it ...what needs to be fixed... and blah blah blah.

Conservatives, neocons, social conservatives...whatever...these are the greedy self centered, selfish, closed minded, bigoted, corrupt , deceptive, fanatical, willfully ignorant group that has nearly destroyed our nation and is directly responsible for our current disaster. They are meant to die, to fade away, to be mocked and ridiculed but undeserving of attention or "rebranding" (which only means finding a more successful way of selling the same old crap). Good riddance.

The democrats contain the new republicans. The democrats are now basically a two party...party.
Conserva-dems and liberal-progressives.
The Bayhs and Specters blue dogs to Kucinich and Bernies Sanders (not a dem but sides with 'em). I wish we could just get rid of the pretense and and divide the dem party truthfully into dems and republican lite. What's left of the republican party is not worth rebranding...they can only get stupider. If after all this time they still cannot understand that the majority of our nation are liberal then they've stopped growing as a party. And if they do realize it then they are that part of the dems party we call republican lite or blur dog.

A moving spirit.

There's a
moving and
delicate spirit
here, in my
mind, like
a pretty desire
in the light
of a young
dove.

Francesco Sinibaldi

I feel their pain.....really, honestly, and after all the stuff that has been done in the name of their principles and spin and lies....

I really don't give a s....t. Makes me giggle. What a wonderful wonderful dilemma. No direction they can turn that doesn't alienate half of an already small and dwindling minority.

They have to make a clean break now. They need to set the religious right free if they have any chance of surviving in the long run. They will be in abject wilderness for some years, but it's a risk they will have to take. Otherwise, as Steve said, they will be stuck where they are. They will be whittled away until they are nothing.

They cannot re-brand as it's just slapping a band-aid on a gushing artery wound. The more they tinker, the more idiotic they look.

Until the present GOP drops the religious right they will continue to lose national races. Free of the "social conservatives" they will then be able to go back to their roots of fiscal conservativsm (read: ruling for the rich) and occasionally con enough independents to elect someone to the presidency.

Big deal. The religious right has nowhere else to go.

And why are progressives gloating? The Democrats do the same damn thing to us!

Hey, what are the Republicans complaining about? They made decisions back in the 1970s to give them a real chance for power at the national level, and for a long time it worked. They held the Presidency for 20 of 28 years from 1981-2009, held the Senate for 18 of those 28 years, and even held the House, where the small-state bias isn't at play, for 12 of 28 years. Given their track record from 1933-1981 (16 of 48 yrs Pres, 2 of 48 for House and Senate) that's really quite an impressive accomplishment for the party of the upper class.

Alas, the deal they made in the 1970s was at most a 2-generation thing. They chose to align themselves with the segregationists and the religious extremists in order to get a solid voting base. This was a short-term play for two reasons: first, it meant that they would eventually lose their previous base of the educated middle class in the Northeast, as they did. Second, taking the side of reactionaries on social issues is always a losing bet long term, as newer generations invariably are more open minded than previous ones.

So now they are stuck. The core type of Republican from 40 years ago -- the Eisenhowers and the Fords -- have mostly deserted the party. Those in that group who remain Republicans in name were Obamacons in the last election. Even Goldwater was moving away from the party in his last years. Alas, this group of former Republicans included their intellectual leaders -- the people who would be able to chart a new path.

So they are now a party of reactionaries. And let there be no mistake -- although Obama won by only 7% nationally there are a number of factors that indicate the problem is far worse than just a 7% loss. First, McCain's national totals were propped up by intense support from the redneck states. As national polls have shown, outside the South Obama's lead was way into the double digits. Second, for all the talk about how Americans wanted change there were still a lot of moderates who weren't sure they were ready to trust a Democrat, or perhaps a black -- given 4 years of competent, not even excellent, leadership from Obama and those moderates will again be comfortable with Democrats. Third, McCain was indeed the Republicans best hope, which is why the party elite worked behind the scenes to get him the nomination. Huckabee, Romney, Guiliani -- or even newcomers like Palin -- would all have lost by larger percentages than McCain, who still had some of the aura of "independent" with some of the electorate.

I wonder how this will turn out for the Republicans. Even their current leadership is as extremely reactionary, and paranoid, as their base is. Somehow I think the only solution for the old time Republican elites is to let the current party follow the extremists into electoral oblivion, then start afresh in 8 or 12 years with an offshoot of the independents and centrist Democrats.

bjobotts -- two party system=bad. one party system=worse.

you have to do a really, really, awful terrible job as an incumbent to lose your party primary. officials often have more power within their party than within the government, and so have more ability to squelch in-party dissent. without a viable two-party system, you are almost sure to get unaccountable, corrupt, and incompetent government.

of course, unaccountable corrupt and incompetent was what we had with bush... something definitely went wrong there... the republicans had some strange media/cultural advantages...

but in the long run, we are better off with a sane republican party. at the VERY least, a sane republican party will help shift the overton window so Democrats can actually be the social democrats we need to catch up to Europe.

In fact, without the christ-crazies the GOP is left with petit bourgeois provincials in the slave states and a few emotionally-susceptible misfits elsewhere (with anxiety disorders, for the most part). The closest these chumps ever get to a country club is the weedy golf course of their flimsy, foreclosure-ravaged mcmansion tract. Kiss your big-money donors goodbye. The oligarchs have bought the Dems instead.

Now that even arch-libertarian Richard Posner has been kicked in the head by Reality and is finally admitting that the evil gvmt needs to reign-in the excesses of the free market, all bets are off.

We're at the beginning of a HUGE realignment.

Everyday now you've got some post about the republican party...what is wrong with it ...what needs to be fixed... and blah blah blah.

I believe you mean every post.

"mudwall jackson wrote :"do not gloat over the republicans' problems. despite fielding an inferior ticket, they did manage to get 47 percent of the national vote in the last election."

Let's be honest about this: If Obama were white, he'd have won by 15 points instead of 7. That's the pink elephant in the room.

"...the only solution for the old time Republican elites is to let the current party follow the extremists into electoral oblivion, then start afresh in 8 or 12 years with an offshoot of the independents and centrist Democrats."
fooba at 6:26 PM

Exactly. And by that time America will indeed be, as the Republican rump has accurately assessed, a social democratic society. Given this scenario, then, the long term questions that need to be asked (starting now) revolve around what kinds of structural/Constitutional changes can an empowered progressive majority engender, so's to keep this country from devolving into another round of inmates running the asylum. Cuz this latest brush with proto-fascism was close enough, thank you very much.

So - what steps can/must a 21st century progressivism with deep and lasting electoral roots take to increase the likelihood of balanced, effective governance? Structural/procedural changes in the Senate? Congressional redistricting reform? Limited SCOTUS tenure? Instant runoff voting, proportional representation, etc.? American political winds certainly can change, quickly, but given the evidence it seems as though the Repukes are going to go down, slowly and painfully. (Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of reactionary authoritarians.) So for me the question remains of what long term, structural changes must this country make to its system of governance so as to give the venal, small, and amoral far less to grab onto.

"liberterians are tired of being associated with the wingnuts" - T-01

HaHaHaHaHa...Ok,ok, so they may have had a bargain, but this is pot & kettle stuff...both groups are equally delusional.

I think whom ever takes the reins as the next latest greatest gopper power brokers, will probably fall into the 70's and 80's style of cultural code talk, just to keep the faith, but seemingly avoid mainstream alienation... it worked once and probably will work again, considering the target.

NCNAers (to the social conservatives): You guys are the Whigs!

Social conservatives (to the NCNAers): No, you guys are totally the Whigs!

Democrats (to both): Guys, guys, stop all this silly arguing - can't you see you're both the Whigs?!!

what they need to regain power is WWIV and Patreus to run in either 12 or 16 and that might be the situation we find ourselves in. The world changes on a dime, fighting the last battles and picking over the bones of the Bush GOP is a losing game.

"Think of the future..." It aint in abortion and homo marriages, it's water rights, nuclear armegedon, and water ever other shitstorm mother nature throws into the mix.

I too am continuously dumbfounded as to how narrow the scope of this blog is. Steve Benen is one boring ass dude. GOP GOP GOP GOP GOP GOP GOP. My team good your team bad.

Tell us what is going on in the world for a change instead of bullshit beltway punditocracy regurgitations.

Cat,

It's called Washington Monthly hence the focus on beltway politics. There are plenty of other blogs you can read if you don't want "beltway punditocracy regurgitations."

So, drichmond, Max Baucus not allowing seating of supporters for Single Pay at the first Finance Committe meeting occurred exactly where, Glacier National Park? Is any thread expressing criticism of any Democrat off limits, or will it continue to be "All RepuG Gaffes, All the Time"?

Health care reform is said to be one of our President's top priorities. Therefore, when the first hearing is held "Very Much Within The Beltway" and Single Pay is excluded by the "Best Little Whorehouse in Montana Max", it should not rate a discussion on this site?

berttheclock,

No that isn't the point. This blog has many issues that occur outside the beltway and a lot within. I'm fine with both and it doesn't bother me that some topics are about the republicans disarray or other topics.

There are a lot of things that are unsettling about the Dems too. The dems letting the mortgage bailout help die without a push from the Whitehouse for starters. Or the letting folks who interpreted laws saying torture is ok get off or the ones who executed such orders free doesn't wash.

You want to split hairs by all means go right ahead. I think Steve does a great job, you don't like it, start your own blog.

The Republicans like Reagan. Reagan could get elected. That enabled Republican insiders to get into power and run the government any way they wanted.

What's more is there to it?

They liked Reagan because he could get them the power. It wasn't about policies because Reagan really didn't have many. It was just about getting power.

I wonder, do Republicans like Diebold voting machines the same way they like Reagan?