A lot has been made of the Republican's drop in membership/identification. Apparently, only 20 percent of the voting public identifies themselves as Republicans. First, we should get a firm handle on what that means. Tell that to some people and they would immediately assume that the other 80 percent are Democrats. This has never been the case and is certainly not the case now.
When you look at the Democratic numbers, you see that they usually float between 30 and 35 percent. The Republicans used to be the same with the other 33 percent being labeled independent. Even that is a bit misleading. You have true independents and then you have independents that lean one way or the other. The business of elections is about mobilizing those in your party and those that are leaning your way to show up at the polls on that particular Tuesday.
When I was in college, a lot was made of the 1994 congressional election and the presence of what is called a partisan reallignment. For those not familiar with the political jargon that political scientists use, a partisan reallignment means that a majority of the voting public switches sides. This is significant because up until that point, it was a matter of course to assume that there were more Democrats out there than Republicans. The Republican strategy was always a simple fact of getting a higher percentage of your voters to vote than the other side. Eljefe did a very good job of outlining some of the things that Republican office holders did to discourage some Democratic people from voting. These practices have long been established, but few people do anything about them.
Think of it in terms of a football game. If you have nine guys on your team and your opponent has eleven, you better do some pretty impressive misdirection to get the results to your side. Republicans have always been good at that. Still, the 2006 election and the last presidential race shows that that so-called partisan reallignment is dead. In fact, my mother in law said the Democrats were dead in 2004. How things can change in two years. In fact, the last four years have shown me that quite the opposite is true.
Mind you, conservatism and liberalism will never die. They are opposing forces that really cannot exist without the other. So, what we may be witnessing is the Republican party going the way of the Whigs. Another conservative party will have to take its place. This is not simply a rebranding. It's not like the local jackass changing the name on his restaurant and expecting the customers to come back. This is that guy having to sell his interest to someone else so they can set up a new shop. How this will end up looking is anyone's best guess.
Why will this occur? Every party has its nutcases. We all have our guys and gals that we send on a beer run when the important dignitary is coming in. You can muzzle a nutcase or two when you are trying to make yourself appealing to the general public. You can cover up that one wart or pimple. However, when the party is overrun with nutcases and it is the reasonable people sent out on the beer run you are in serious trouble. When no one even thinks to tell Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin, or Michael Steele to shut up you have a serious problem. I haven't even mentioned Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, or the king of the lunatics, Glenn Beck. Those guys don't hold elective office. They can be explained away.
When 30 of your elected senators decide to protect companies over rape victims. When all of your Republicans say that they would rather defeat the president than have affordable health care for all. When a hand full not only remain silent, but join in when Idiot J. Halfwit suggests that Barack Obama wasn't born in America. When a good number of your flock considers Halliburton a good company while thinking ACORN is a threat to our freedom. When all of these things happen, it's time for a new party. I wish them luck. I really do wish them luck, because we need good conservatives to temper liberalism like we need good liberalism to temper conservatism.
I'm with Carguy, and I think we should immediately establish a new national party called The Splinter Party! It would contain at least a 60% majority.
Scott,
Good writeup. As for a new party taking the place of the old, that's a tall order. Better, I think, to watch where the fundraising winds up. Where the donor money goes, the unwashed masses will follow.
scott to me politics seem to be north vs. south mentality at present. the "tea party" craze, summer town hall madness and party of no concept baffles me. obviously the voting majority elected president obama yet the minority has media power and official recognition that no minority to my knowledge has ever possessed. also baffling to me is the current preoccupation of people who complain when a house bill is 3000 pages or not posted online enough time for public consumption. i'm a delegating person, i learned the importance of this through reading a book on the habits of highly successful people. yet the current congress/senate "do it yourself-er" for some reason wants to micro-manage every decision of their elected official, forgetting the person is elected to do a job and cannot please each individual constituent! high maintenance constituent wants a say in supreme court confirmation yet seems perfectly fine with 30 elected officials essentially sanctioning rape as a job hazard for arbitration. i wrote an article about the highly charged words "liberal" and "conservative" where i made a point that opposing sides blindly associate negativity without scratching the surface without regard to connotation. sunscreen should be applied liberally, a sprained ankle treated conservatively. while i do not endorse blind party lock-step i can see no benefit to democrats acquiring a 60 voting majority, then squandering an opportunity to move legislation which is party principled like health care reform. i can surmise in this twitter age, you tube 15 minute of fame grab, it could possibly every man and woman for themselves. i was just thinking some of obama's approval dip could be from his own party jumping on the "independent" bandwagon that is recently so fashionable, 8yrs of bush already "out of sight, out of mind". how can anything ever be accomplished without compromise? thanks for another insightful, thought provoking topic.
Scott wrote: I haven't even mentioned Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, or the king of the lunatics, Glenn Beck.
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I'm not so sure I agree with that statement.
For my money there is no bigger blowhard, lunatic, or self-serving bombastic moron than Rush.
The two party system can and has worked for us for many years. We need it.
Now that's not to say we can't get by with the two "official" parties having a 20-30% regular following with about half of the populace being unaligned and only "leaning" one way or the other.
But we can't splinter off into 4,5,6 parties like Italy. Unfortunately, EACH party now has a significant number of members in two extremes plus the moderates. That's 6 distinct groups. Give or take.
What to do??????