Republicans in the Wilderness for Years to Come?

[kennetha]

I think this quote from Tom Davis, who is not seeking re-election, is quite telling about where the Repugnant party really stands.

No more. The revolution is over, the thrill is gone and the Republican brand under President Bush has, in Davis’s view, been so tarnished that, as he likes to say, “if we were a dog food, they would take us off the shelf.” These will be Davis’s last few weeks in Congress. He decided against re-election, disaffected by the partisanship, by a process he calls broken, by a party he considers hijacked by social conservatives. “We’re just not getting much done,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Davis-t.html?hp">Tom Davis Gives Up

The Republicans are going to be completely out of power for the first time since the beginning of Clinton's first term. I hope we make better use of our consolidated power than we did under Clinton. But worry is for the future.

As a diehard democratic partisan, I'm tempted to just jump for joy and gloat. But I'll let my better angels speak instead. I wish them well during their coming decades wandering in the wilderness. Here's hoping that they find a new voice and vision, that can be a serious competitor once again for the allegiance of broad swaths of the American electorate. I mean, I don't really want to live in a one-party state -- even if it's my own party.

Indeed, fellow democrats, let's one and all wish the Republicans well during their decade or so lost in the wilderness.

[ClassWarrior]

1. Don't count on it. Even when the election is over, we still have a lot of work to do.

NGU.

[kennetha]

4. I agree lots of work to be done.

And we shouldn't ever give in to cockiness. I remember how both Clinton and Carter blew it with bicarmel majorities. When Clinton came to power, with both houses in our control, I thought it was going to be a golden age for democrats. Didn't last long. One brief shining moment, really.

[ClassWarrior]

5. How true. We got too comfy.

Never Give Up.

[Wapsie B]

2. They need to expell the neocons and rwing fundies

before they'll actually be a viable political party again. The gop's addiction to those two groups is similar to that of crack or meth. They just can't stop themselves. Well they better find a way.

[jacksonian]

7. so true -nt

[AlinPA]

10. I hope they never do expel the right-wing fundamentalists. The wackier the better.

Then the rest of the US can see how stupid they are.

[dbonds]

3. Wouldn't it be great if out of all this the two major parties became Dems and Greens.

[kennetha]

6. Not going to happen

there will be a center-right party of capital in this country. Too many center-right constituencies for there not to be. But the economic rightists have to find away to divorce themselves from the social conservatives. Problem is two-fold: First, the economic rightist and the social conservatives need each other in the best of times for them. But, second, these are the worst of times for them. That's thanks to the utterly disastrous Bush II Presidency. Not since Jimmy Carter and before that Richard Nixon and before that Herbert Hoover has a president left his party so utterly discredited. So the basic Republican "elites" (or should I say Yahoos) are seriously on the run, I think. Plus it was always something of a shot-gun wedding borne of electoral necessity more than anything else.

We might eventually have 3-4 parties like some European countries do. But I think that's a long way off.

[dbonds]

9. If the social conservatives, economic conservatives, neocons, and corporatist split up...

Then the resulting individual parties would be tiny. Thats the way they got into power in the first place under the Reagan Coalition. There is not enough people in any of those groups to be significant on their own.

But Democratic Party is a centrist party. The DLC wing of it is center right (corporatist). I wouldn't want to see it move father right just to have the green party pick up those father left. But any of those individual groups of a broken up Republican party would be a minor party - which would at least open the door to my fantasy of a strong left.

[kennetha]

13. I agree with your basic premiss.

That's why their task is level of difficulty 10.

But there is this: a reformed Center-Right party, that got rid of the social conservatives, probably could pull away some number of DLC type democrats to make them pretty major contenders. You could look at at least some DLC types as sort of semi-progressive republicans in democratic garb.

[iiibbb]

8. Don't count chickens before hatched. When Bush won, Republicans thought they'd rule for 20 yrs

[kennetha]

11. Agreed!

Also when Bill CLinton won his first term, I though we had found a formula for victory that we could repeat ad infinitum. So I definitely take your point!

[OwnedByFerrets]

12. Well Mr Davis, I'm sure you did your part

in fucking up our country by voting for everyone on Monkeyboys disasterous policies.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. But the irony

from this statement:

a party he considers hijacked by social conservatives

is that so many in that self-same party KNEW this is true, yet they ignored it and continued to rally around the very things that would bring them down. It's like we are watching mass suicide in real time. They were so busy pointing out the divisions in the Democratic Party that they were in abject denial of their own, more lethal divisions.

I think that they are assuming that even if they lost, they can always think-tank their way back to the "Reagan principles" and present that in some newly reformed and reborn party. But methinks that first, they have alot of housecleaning to do when it comes to their pandering to the "wedge issues voters" in their midst, and second they need to swallow the fact that those very "Reagan principles" WERE the punch drinks that killed most of them in the end. And the stunt-casting of a McPalin ticket finished the rest off.

[Forkboy]

15. Electing Obama is just Step 1.

We have to keep the pressure on, keep the 50 state strategy in place, and strengthen every gain we make this year. This is just the beginning.

[jacksonian]

16. the main thing that has been killing them

is a serious lack of candidates at all levels.

What has happened is they have had too much emphasis on national media to carry their brand. That gives them the false feeling that any soap is as easy to sell as any other, that anybody spouting the right "message" can be sold. Combined with a lock-step control of that message by their RW fundie which has completely taken over the party apparatus, nobody real wants to run for them. Everything is top-down policy control.

They are a mess, and there is no clear way out. The fundies are the problem, and they are not going to go gentle into that good night.

[kennetha]

17. If we get 60 in the Senate

Increase our majority in the house, control the Whitehouse, we can make the Great Society days look like a time when we had training wheels on in terms of putting our stamp on the government and society. And once we do, the Repugnants will be basically irrelevant until they come up with a new rallying cry.

[ShortnFiery]

18. No, they have too much $ and power - they'll scamper into the woodwork

as when a light is flashed on a group of cockroaches.

They'll go underground and lick their wounds.

Like pure EVIL, right wing fascist republicans will not ever DIE as long as they can whip people up into "hate-fest frenzies."

Always keep up your guard, they're vicious and ever present.