The Future of the GOP?

Krugman:

You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

I’ve been thinking about this and I’m starting to conclude that the 2012 GOP race could easily come down to a three-way between Palin, Romney, and Huckabee. Palin and the Huckster will have the theocons battling it out against Romney, who will represent the party’s old establishment.

In a race like that, Palin would have a decent shot to win the nomination as much of the base will still be angry about the media’s treatment of Palin and their unsubstantiated claims of ACORN-based voter fraud in 2008. Their resentment will linger and fester, causing them to nominate Palin in a final act of “fuck you” defiance that the hard-right theocrats seem to be so good at.

More from Krugman:

But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

I think we’ll win tomorrow. But once that happens, the battle will have only just begun.

You think the war the GOP waged on Clinton was ugly? It was nothing compared to what’s coming once Obama is in office. Limbaugh and his ilk will once again go apeshit accusing Obama of being a Muslim Marxist with a crazy Christian preacher who hates puppies and they’ll be crying about Michelle’s nonexistent “whitey” video and they’ll be angry at both of them because they will adopt a breed of dog that the wingnuts don’t favor. Remember how much they hate Socks that cat?

And, worse, the wingnuts will have the help of Fox News to rile up their resentment.

But in their anger, post-rationalism, and pettiness, the hard-right may cease to be relevant, especially if Obama, as expected proves to be a competent leader who inspires our better selves.

I can’t wait for the first GOP presidential debate, which, if this year is any guide, will be held shortly after the 2010 midterms.

GOP’s Present and Future

I am loving this:

Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.

They believe he will be powerful enough to remake the American political landscape with even more ease than Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

Considering that Bush won by one or two percent in 2004 and called it a landslide, it’s fun to read that Bush’s minions are freaking out about a likely five percent or more win by Obama.

I know schaden freude doesn’t look good on my, but it’s damn fun!

The prospect of an electoral rout has unleashed a bitter bout of recriminations both within the McCain campaign and the wider conservative movement, over who is to blame and what should be done to salvage the party’s future.

My advice to the GOP is that if they want to be a viable party in the future, they need to dump the religous right and go back to being a party that supports smaller government, but stays away from social issues. No one wants the GOP in their bed rooms.

Snip.

“It’s hard to see a turnaround in the White House race,” he (former Bush speech writer David Frum) said. “This could look like an ideological as well as a party victory if we’re not careful. It could be 1980 in reverse.

“With this huge new role for federal government in the economy, the possibility for mischief making is very, very great. One man should not have a monopoly of political and financial power. That’s very dangerous.”

I agree with Frum on that one. I prefer an executive branch controlled by one party and the legislative branch controlled by another, but Bush and the GOP failed so badly, the Democrats deserve at least a couple of years of one-party rule.

In North Carolina, where Senator Elizabeth Dole seems set to loose, Republicans are running adverts that appear to take an Obama victory for granted, warning that the Democrat will have a “blank cheque” if her rival Kay Hagen wins. “These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis,” the narrator says. “All branches of Government. No checks and balances.”

Um. Didn’t we have six years of one party GOP rule recently? There were no checks and balances from 2001-2007. How did that work out for us? The Democrats will probably fuck up one party rule, but let’s let them try to deal with our nation’s problems. If they fuck it up, they’ll be out by 2011.

Snip.

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan’s greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain’s running mate as a “symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics.” Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a “fatal cancer to the Republican Party”.

Snip.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin’s critics as “cocktail party conservatives” who “give aid and comfort to the enemy”.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: “There’s going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?”

Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin’s brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.

He said: “She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency.”

Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.

He said: “Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan.” On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican Party.

Schadenfreude is a dish best served cold.

That being said, I am starting to think that Palin will be the GOP frontrunner in 2012 as the GOP rallies behind their socially conservative soulmate. By that time, I imagine that Obama will have had a relatively successful first term that will have the fundies up in arms over something.

Their two most viable candidates will be Palin and Romney. Huckabee may also play a role.

GOP voters will have to decide between a pro-business Romney and a pro-fundie Palin.

I have no idea which direction they will pick, but it will be a lot of fun to watch.

It’s Biden!

I haven’t gotten my personal text message from Barack Obama yet, but this seems to confirm all the speculation:

The United States Secret Service has dispatched a protective detail to assume the immediate protection of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., a source tells ABC News, indicating in all likelihood that Biden has been officially notified that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, has selected him to be his running mate.

I’m feeling pretty good about this pick. One of the problems I have with Obama and a lot of other Democrats is that sometimes they are too afraid to speak their minds. That’s not a problem that Joe Biden has. Yes, he makes mistakes, but he says what he’s thinking, and he’s usually right.

I can’t wait to see the Biden/Romney debate. Romney will finally be revealed to be the android that he is.

Oh, and Biden’s one-liners will also be a lot of fun.

And also, foreign policy credentials, experience and all that stuff.

McCain/Romney?

Hmm…

Mr McCain has invited Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former Massachusetts Governor and one-time presidential candidate Mitt Romney to his Arizona home at the weekend.

Correspondents say the three men are high up on Mr McCain’s list of possible vice-presidential candidates.

The McCain campaign denied that Mr McCain was holding the meetings with a view to selecting a running mate, saying the event was a purely social occasion.

As I understand it, Jindal may be the future of the GOP (and if he is, that’s not a bad thing for the country or that party), but he’s only 37 years old. McCain sharing a ticket with Jindal might add some youth and vigor to McCain’s lack of either, but  it would make it a lot harder for McCain to attack Obama on the inexperience issue.

Charlie Crist seems to be a competent governor from Florida who governs as a moderate. He was married once, but only for 7 months back in 1979. He is rumored to be gay, which may or not be true. But could McCain run with an allegedly gay man and expect that conservatives would still vote for him? Probably not.

So of the three, that leave McCain with Romney, who certainly has enough experience and the “correct” sexual orientation to be VP. Romney even looks like a president in a blandly handsome kind of way. But Romney’s Mormonism wouldn’t help McCain among conservative Christians.

In the end, I find myself believing McCain when he says the weekend is a social visit to make it look like those three are being considered.

If McCain is smart, he will choose someone like Governor Tim Pawlenty of MN. He’s young (47 years old), handsomish, and a moderate governor. He’d probably help McCain carry Minnesota.

But, given how well McCain has run his campaign so far, my money’s on Romney.