Today if Rush Limbaugh casts a shadow over the Republican Party, it means eight more years of Dems controlling the White House and Congress.
Thomas Schaller writes in Salon,
What is the state of the GOP at the dawn of the Obama era? The GOP has not quite ebbed to New Deal or post-1964 Democratic landslide levels, but it has certainly reached its lowest point since the comeback congressional cycle of 1966. Obama’s 53 percent national popular vote share is the highest for a Democrat since 1964, and there is no obvious set of formidable Republican presidential challengers for the 2012 election.
As Salon’s Mike Madden observed from interacting with volunteers and activists on hand at the Capital Hilton in Washington for the national meeting, “If the mood and the speeches at the winter meeting are any guide, Republicans are seeking refuge from electoral defeat in an alternate reality, one where the public still loves them — or would if they could only improve their sales pitch. And where going along with President Obama’s agenda just isn’t in the cards.” If any further evidence is needed, consider this little gem: On the afternoon the 168 national committee members were electing Michael Steele their new chairman, fully 10 days into the Obama administration, the “national leadership” page on the RNC’s Web site still depicted George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as president and vice president.
I just checked; the RNC page has been changed to congratulate Michael Steele.
Schaller goes on to describe a party that can’t decide where it’s going. There is no leadership to speak of. There are no rising stars that look like viable presidential candidates in 2012, although of course they’ve got some time. Basically, the party has a pack of right-wing extremists in the House who think it’s still 1994; some reasonably competent, more moderate but low-profile governors; Sarah Palin (Schaller doesn’t mention her, but I don’t think she’s done messing with the GOP yet); some aged senators who plan to retire; Jim Bunning, who appears to be brain dead but refuses to quit; and a handful of moderate senators that the base doesn’t like.
As I remember it, as far as rising stars go the GOP was in a similar place in 1996. There was no obvious, dominant, star-power candidate to take on Bill Clinton. The best they could come up with was Bob Dole, who was long past his sell-by date.
But then the GOP insiders must’ve decided that George W. Bush would be their rising star in 2000. So they packaged him as a moderate and began their sales campaign. A perfect storm of public complacency, media complacency (plus corruption, incompetence, etc.), wussy Democrats, the right-wing propaganda media machine, dirty tricks, and a lapdog Supreme Court put George W. Bush in the White House. I firmly believe that were it not for 9/11 he would have been bounced in 2004, but of course we’ll never know.
I’m sure party insiders already have been discussing who they will promote as the next heir to Ronald Reagan and how the heir will be packaged for public sale. I’m not counting them out. If the public becomes disappointed in the Obama Administration the GOP will have an opening, and if the entire party can get behind one guy in the next couple of years they could pull off a comeback. Right now it looks like a long shot, but it’s possible.
My larger point, though, is that the extremist, Gingrich/Rove/Norquist Republican Party has been pulling off a trapeze act for some time. Their dominance of media and Washington has far exceeded the real public support for their agenda for many years. And the ideological whackjobs the base tends to fall in love with are unsalable to the general public on a national level. In 2000 they packaged Dubya as a moderate, remember. And now with shifting demographics — their base is getting older, and there are only so many socially dysfunctional white men to go around these days — there is no way they’ll be able to keep the same old trapeze act in the air much longer.
David Lightman writes for McClatchy that the GOP’s winning strategy these days is opposing President Obama. That’s it. That’s all they’ve got. Oh, they’re still talking about cutting taxes and shrinking government, but is anyone (but them) listening?
The strategy carries enormous risks, however, because it could suggest that Republicans are eager to put the brakes on emergency aid to millions of Americans who are trying to survive what’s fast becoming the nation’s worst economic downturn since World War II.
Yeah, that does seem chancy.
It also creates a risk that the GOP, which no longer has a single House member from any of the six New England states and no senators from a Pacific coast state, is in danger of becoming a regional, ideologically focused party.
“We’re all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us,” warned Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Yes. Well, what’s more interesting to me is whether the Senate passes the stimulus bill, and whether the Dems have the spines to put back in the stuff that was taken out to appease the House GOP. Stay tuned.