My Prediction with the GOP

I've talked about this in previous posts and discussed it on Facebook, but I really do think that with this crushing defeat of the Republican party, both in the presidential and Senate / House race, we going to see a split in the party in the years to come.

We've seen steady growth from the Christian base that helped launch Bush into office. It's not necessarily a bad thing, until you start to see religion and government getting mixed up. The term 'social conservative' has really come to mean 'putting the Bible in the Constitution' in many cases. You had numerous GOP candidates at the beginning who did not believe in Evolution, and who supported national Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and abortion. Romney's speech on his religion just wasn't as compelling (or convincing) as JFK's.

But you still had two of the top three candidates who were relatively moderate, Giuliani being an early favorite. But the base began throwing support into the more religious candidates, Huckabee became the dark horse of the GOP. This is where we began seeing McCain change his views on certain issues to align with the base of his party, which was a wise choice politically, because it eventually grabbed him the nomination.

I don't see McCain as the type of GOP who would split to the Evangelical base; he criticized the base in 2000 - and I think he realized it cost him the election. So this time around, he did what he could to please them, which again, was a smart political choice, but not good for the country. The height of his conversion was when he chose a VP candidate for the purpose of energize that base.

A political party should not be influenced by a single religion, but I think that is slowly happening with the GOP, and why I see a split. Moderate Republicans like Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel seem very much turned off by the current path of the GOP (Powell's endorsement of Obama was a pretty obvious sign of that). A great point he made was when he overheard a prominent Republican echoing the rumors of whether or not Obama was a Muslim, to which he replied "What you should be asking is - so what if he is?". You even see prominent members denouncing the party (a lot of people would have liked to see Bloomberg run as an independent).

And it's not just politicians, I think good portion of Republican voters were turned off by his VP pick, and by some of the flyers and pamphlets they were seeing at GOP rallies. The fact that they remind you of the pamphlets that Fred Phelps' church hands out at soldiers' funerals just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Some Republicans are looking to distance themselves from the Hannity's and O'Reilly's, and the politics of fear, and the "if you don't agree with us, you're un-American" attitude, and get back to the way it was when Reagan took office, where undecided centrist voters leaned right instead of left.

It's for these reasons that I eventually see a split in the party. You have Bush, Palin, Romney, Huckabee, and others keeping the drive towards a Christian base. And you have Powell, Hagel, Rice, and even Cheney (as much as I despise him) switching gears and getting back to national issues instead of social values. And even further down the line, I see that Bush/Palin party going the way of the Whig, and slowly fading into obscurity, while the new generation of "Old Republicans" eventually get back some of their former glory.

At this point, I think that's the direction the GOP needs to go in order to save themselves from imploding.

Further reading:

Can Palin resurrect the GOP? Does she want to?
Rove in sights as party seeks a scapegoat
Where do Palin, Republican Party go from here?
Republicans seek road back from ruins
Battered Party Now Faces 'Finger-Pointing And Blame'


I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions, as I tend to make plenty of assumptions and often wrong on the facts of certain issues.