What's next for the GOP?

[Kidlicious]

Even Reagan needed help from the fact that Carter wasn't very popular.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Perhaps, but he did win 489 to 49 over Carter.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Perhaps, but he did win 489 to 49 over Carter.

Besides the Iran hostage situation Carter really ****ed up with his economic malaise speech. It looks like end times and Reagan was in the right place at the right time.

[Imran Siddiqui]

One can say the same about Obama .

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
One can say the same about Obama .

And he might be the next Hoover.

But I can't imagine people turning to the GOP in 2012. Maybe a third party will rise.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oh, no way in 2012... unless Obama is caught sleeping with white women throughout his term .

[KrazyHorse]

I'm offended that his white half is sleeping with a black woman.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Oh, no way in 2012... unless Obama is caught sleeping with white women throughout his term .

I was thinking about this today.

When Greenspan said that no one could have predicted the crisis look how many people rolled their eyes at that. Now Obama has a choice. He can react now to what is a possible very severe crisis or he can go about like the economy is going to turn around in a year or so. If he does that and it turns out to be a serious prolonged crisis than people are going to blaim him for not taking serious action quickly. No one is going to accept the "no one could have predicted" the crisis would be this bad.

In this case a left wing party has an opportunity.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
1. Elect the GOP because they have a clear plan for America and will be effective at implementing it.
2. Discover that this is in fact true; the problem is, the plan is actually evil.
3. Elect the Democrats because they're not the Republicans.
4. Discover that the Democrats have no plan, and probably couldn't implement it if they did.
5. Repeat ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Wow, QFT.

[-Jrabbit]

Agreed. Plus, we finally get our jetpacks!~~~

[Ben Kenobi]

Now that they've been pretty well flattened, where do they go from here? I'm not a political junkie, but these are the options I see:

They are better off then they were under Clinton in '92, and better off then they were under Carter in '76.

I don't see any reason why they cannot effectively rebound again in 4 years and repeat the Reagan years.

1. They spend many years in effective exile, barely holding on to a few seats in Congress and being unobtrusive, until the public has forgotten the W years and starts voting for them again.

Doubtful. Americans have been voting in a cycle. I would be sincerely surprised given how resilient they were in this election cycle that their downturn would last more then 4 years.

2. Obama does something phenomenally stupid, or there are a bunch of gigundo scandals, or the Democratic party in some other way lives up to its reputation for screwing up a sure thing, and the political balance returns to 2004 levels or so.

That's what I expect to happen. Repeat of Carter years in 1976, but this time Obama is a weaker less experienced Carter. He's already making mistakes in dredging up ancient Clinton rejects, and I'm expecting every single hard left circle jerk to come down the pipe in the next 2 years.

3. The party fragments into economic and social conservative factions, which beat up on each other and vie for power, effectively making the Dems invincible for some time.

This will happen over the next year or so. The Republican leadership is going to get this scrap out of the way first.

4. The GOP disintegrates entirely and eventually a new party coalesces around heaven-knows-what platform. Presumptively the economic types flee to Libertarianism and the social types start stockpiling ammo in walled compounds or something.

It will be a repeat of the Whigs which is very much a possibility. It depends on how these battles in the Republican party go over the next while.

The Republican party could very much fold like the Whigs do, and become a coalition of social conservatives, while the moderate neocons will drift over to the Dems, where they belong. Same way the republican party was an abolitionist party.

This election demonstrated that social conservative ideas were far more popular then the GOP, so the GOP has to take up that banner, or collapse.

[Ben Kenobi]

Man, would I love to see more Republican politicians get a spine and severe themselves from the religious right . . . .

In case you missed it you took it hard from the socons in CA.

An alliance of socons, blacks and hispanics would flatten the Dems.

[Ben Kenobi]

I liken this to more of LBJ's situation than Harding->Hoover. The Republicans gained so much from the post-LBJ anti-vietnam war backlash, and then kept it after Carter. Who would've predicted the GOP still be in power for basically the next thirty years after a GOP president was forced to resign amidst a major scandal, only losing ONE election after, and two more elections to a nearly-republican, in the next three decades (8 elections)?

That's the Carter legacy. I can't believe the Dems did the same thing again, but that would mean not electing Obama.

I think there will be a general anti-GOP backlash for a few decades, longer if Obama and his successor(s) are very good at their jobs and don't screw anything serious up (and get lucky and don't have a severe depression or other major catastrophe), shorter if they are incompetent. But at this point, even Jimmy Carter couldn't lose the democrats the presidency quickly I don't think.

Few decades?

You'd have to have a run like they had from Wilson to Hoover, 12 straight years of Republicans, plus an economic disaster presided over by a Republican ineffectually for a full term. That's what it took to get the FDR years.

Obama is going to have to show that he's more competent then Carter, or else the pendulum will shift the other way. He has no excuses. He can't blame the Republicans for anything, he either succeeds or fails miserably. Americans have given him a blank cheque for 2 years, and Obama so far hasn't shown that he's of the mind to avoid the Carter disaster.

The only wildcard is the christian/social conservative element, though, to me. If that movement picks up more steam and sticks its bus behind the GOP once again, that could make things more complicated; but it could also lead to more serious issues down the road, I think.

Here's the thing that Democrats should be worried about. Their base is far more socially conservative then the party. If the small hard left under Obama pisses all over social conservatives for the next 4 years, then he is going to be destroyed when these folks walk away.

If Obama is wise he'll tell the hard left to piss off. He doesn't need to do anything for the social liberals, or the folks in NE. They have nowhere else to go.

[Ben Kenobi]

Fiscal conservatives/pro-business plus social conservatives and pro defense is a winning ticket.

DanS has it right. None of this 'deficit' crap.

Balanced budgets. Debt repayment. Tax cuts.

If the fiscal cons are willing to come along with the socon ride, then this is gonna be one hell of a party.

[-Jrabbit]

Haven't the last 8 years shown us that external conditions trump logic and analysis?

Bush went from insanely popular to virtual laughingstock in the course of his presidency. But I'm convinced that if the terrorist attacks on US soil had continued into his 2nd term, McCain would have won this election with relative ease.