As we enter the year 2013 in two days, the long term future of the Republican Party as a legitimate long term alternative to the Democratic Party is in dire threat of disappearing into the dustbin of history!
The Republican Party lost the Presidential and Congressional Elections of 2012 in a sound repudiation, with Barack Obama soundly defeating Mitt Romney. The US Senate, with 23 of 33 seats up for election being Democratic seats, and expected to lose some seats, ended up winning 25 of the seats, gaining three seats and only losing Nebraska to the Republicans. The US House of Representatives, while remaining in Republican hands, saw a gain of ten House seats by the Democrats. If it was not for gerrymandering by many Republican state legislatures, the Democrats would have gained control, as they won more total votes nationally in House races than the Republicans.
So the GOP really was walloped, and yet the party seems unable to accept what happened, and have allowed themselves to be hijacked by extremist groups, including the Tea Party Movement, Americans For Tax Reform, right wing talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel, the National Rifle Association,The Koch Brothers and other millionaires and billionaires, right wing preachers, and anti immigrant nativists and anti women’s rights elements, therefore resisting the need to move back from the extreme right to the moderate center, where the party had many victories over the years as a more mainstream conservative alternative to the Democratic Party.
It is now a moment of reckoning, as the Republican Party is about to implode, as public opinion polls make clear that the party will be blamed if America goes off the “fiscal cliff”, and taxes go up on everyone, and ruthless spending cuts, which hurt the most needy and disadvantaged in our society, occur!
There is a possibility that the Republican Party will go into the dustbin of history, if they do not reform in time for the midterm elections of 2014, which could, ironically, lead to the demise of the party on its 160th anniversary, having been founded as a reform oriented party in 1854, replacing the Whig Party!
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have a major burden to deal with as the New Year begins, and their own personal futures, as well as that of their party, is meeting the challenge of becoming what they once were, a mainstream centrist party that can appeal to the changing demographics of America, or be replaced by a modern day Whig Party, with statesmen and leaders on the model of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and former Whigs who started the Republican Party, such as Abraham Lincoln!
Professor,
Parties evolve. Once the tea party factor fades away, the GOP will evolve back into the moderate alternative to the Democrats. They have to.
As you know, the pendulum swings. Remember 1994? Heck, remember 2008? 2010?
I still think the future of the Democratic Party itself is just as much in jeopardy as the GOP.
Things like Obamacare and , if the economic situation, does not improve, things could change quickly.
I agree that this version of the GOP is the most extreme version. But, if you remember, many of those who used to be Democrats made the switch over to the GOP during the Reagan years due to views that the party had change.
Change is constant.
You make a very good point, here, Paul. The GOP suffered in the past in 1964 and came back in 1968. It suffered in 1974 and came back in 1980. It lost out in 1986 and came back in 1994. It lost out in 2006 and 2008 and came back in 2010.
And yes, the Democrats suffered massively in 1972 and came back in 1976; and suffered in 1980 but came back in the Senate in 1986. It suffered in 1994 but Clinton won in 1996. It lost a race it had won in 2000, but came back in 2006, 2008, and after a setback in 2010, came back stronger in 2012.
But the difference is that the GOP of 2012 makes the GOP of 1964, 1980, and even 1994 look moderate by comparison. And the party does not seem to have accepted its defeat in 2012, and is resisting the demographics of the nation.
So a total purging of the elements mentioned in the blog entry is essential, but I am not sure that the party will do what it must do, and that is why I imagine the revival of a Whig Party entity on the basis of the conservatism in rational terms represented by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in the 1840s and early 1850s, leading to the Compromise of 1850.
Professor,
Resurrected this column from last month from Froma Harrop, a great columnist for the Providence Journal:
https://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/republicans-need-to-take-their-party-back.html
Thanks very much for this, Paul!