Reply #64: This blog posting is confusing to me.

[crispini]

Here's the first part of the thesis: The GOP is shrinking into a regional party. The original Economist.com story is here:

http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8360116

Here's the first three paragraphs:

The Republicans are in danger of being confined to the South

THREE years ago Zell Miller, then a Democratic senator for Georgia, published an anguished book entitled “A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat”. Today, though, the people who are in that very danger are the Republicans rather than the Democrats.

The Republicans are now engaged in a fierce debate about the meaning of last month's mid-term defeat. Was there anything more to their loss of both chambers of Congress than the six-year itch and an unpopular war? Do they need to press ahead with the conservative agenda or should they revise it? The debate is lively. But it is missing an important aspect: the Zell Miller dimension. Is the Republican Party in danger of shrinking to its southern base? And is it shrinking at exactly the same time that the Democrats are becoming a more national party?

The extent of the southernisation of the Republican Party is astonishing. The party was all but wiped out in its historic base, the north-east. There is now only one Republican in the 22-strong New England House delegation. New Hampshire kicked out its two Republican congressmen (and gave Democrats a majority in both state houses for the first time since 1874). Massachusetts ended 16 years of Republican occupation of the governor's mansion. Rhode Island decapitated Lincoln Chafee despite his moderate record. New York installed Democrats in every statewide office for the first time since 1938.

Now, that's an interesting article, one with some meat behind it.

However, I'm pretty much failing to connect that piece of the blog posting with the second part of the thesis, which is that, to summarize, a lot of the Republican power brokers are from Texas, and that the Texas Republican Party platform is looney. The one does not follow from the other.

Here's the thing: ANY state party platform is going to be naturally extreme; they are written by the crusaders, the true believers. The Texas *DEMOCRATIC* party platform, if I recall correctly, contains an anti-death penalty plank and a medical marijuana plank. So it's interesting, yes, but I'd bet you ten dollars that ANY Republican state party platform will have some weirdo extreme elements in it, if you care to find it.

Now, the other part of the article, that a lot of Republican power brokers are from Texas: Is this news to anyone? And, um, this is a frakking BIG state, with a lot of money floating around, so, um, DUH?

I just don't quite get how the original pieces of the blog posting hang together to give any kind of new insight. :shrug: