Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Welcome to the Wilderness: Where Will the GOP Go From Here?

As I watched Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press recently, I began to think about the current state of the Republican Party. Now, a Republican I am not. However, I do believe in a healthy multiparty system, and with the current death spiral of the Republican Party, we are drifting more and more away from that.

Of course, all parties often find themselves in the political wilderness from time to time. In many parliamentary systems, such as the UK, virtually all power shifts from one party to another every 5-15 years. In the US, with multiple branches of government and rules such as the filibuster, which theoretically are designed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority, such wilderness periods are usually not as absolute. The closest thing the US has seen in the past century was perhaps the period from 1933 to 1939, when the Democrats controlled the Presidency and supermajorities of both Houses. But even then, the Supreme Court was not fully in line, hence FDR’s disastrous attempt to expand the size of the court.  Other time periods in the “liberal consensus” period of 1933-1969 saw much division within the majority party (largely along North-South lines), which gave a great deal of power to the minority party on many issues, such as civil rights.

Therefore, the current Republican wilderness period isn’t as common as we might think. However, at the same time, it is a great time for the party to define itself going forward without the pressure of actually governing. Going forward, there are several different paths the Republican Party could take. Let’s take a look at some of them:

1. The Establishment Direction

Current Leaders: Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Dick Cheney

Potential 2012 Candidates: Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Jeb Bush

This option generally embraces the past and takes the position that what worked in the 1990s will work now, full stop. It simply plugs in tired arguments of the past into the present and expects that they will produce the exact same results, no matter how different circumstances may be today. This option embraces the fact that Republican values are important, and that the party cannot compromise on its core values. This “love us, or leave us” strategy places a renewed emphasis on national security, fear, and wedge issues.  However, unlike some of the options outlined below, this option is very inside baseball. It’s Washington insiders, roaring 1990s, all over again.  According to the latest CNN Research poll, each of the leaders of this strategy have approval ratings in the 30s according recent opinion polls, but yet enjoy the support of a large majority of members of the shrinking Republican party. As more and more Republicans leave the party, the greater percentage of those left that will be in support of this strategy.

2. Establishment with a Twist

Current Leaders: Mitt Romney and Eric Cantor

Potential 2012 Candidates: Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and Tim Pawlenty

This faction of the Republican party is in some ways perceived as “moderate,” but yet in other ways very conformist and in sync with the establishment listed above. However, unlike members of the establishment, people like Mitt Romney and Lindsay Graham are actually somewhat likable individuals that don’t seem like retreads from a past era. However, when you look beyond a few policy exceptions, most in this group fall in line with the group above. However, this path realizes the importance of aesthetics and is willing to compromise on a few tangential issues in order to actually win. While there is nothing necessarily fundamentally different about this group that could necessarily shift the dynamics away from the Republican Party becoming limited to a regional force in the long run, right now this option may be the best bet for the short term survival of the party that doesn’t compromise some on some of its core ideals of the past several decades.

3. Movement Conservatives

Current Leaders:  Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh

Potential 2012 Candidates:  Sarah Palin and Tom Tancredo

This path is top-down populism if there ever was such a thing. Four plus decades after the Southern strategy began its outreach to social conservatives throughout the country, the “movement” they created has come close to completely taking over the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln. What started with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s pawns, first achieved electoral victory within its new home in 1988 when Pat Robertson finished a strong second in the Iowa caucuses, solidly ahead of sitting Vice President George H. W. Bush.  Twenty years later, for the first time, the movement had one of its own nominated to be Vice President of the United States. Don’t expect the movement to stop there. The movement has all the momentum within the party and will not be satisfied until one of its own is the Presidential nominee, no matter what that might mean for the overall party’s general election chances. Although his name may never appear on a ballot, Rush Limbaugh is without a doubt the current leader of this faction of the Republican Party.

4. A New Populism

Current Leader: Mike Huckabee
Potential 2012 Candidate: Mike Huckabee

This option is intriguing because it has the potential to contract and/or expand the reach of the Republican Party in the long run.  Like the movement, it is populist in nature. However, unlike the movement, it seems to have the potential for real bottom-up populism. With an emphasis on social values, religion, and cultural issues, this option in many ways continues the trend of making the GOP a regional party of the South. However, at the same time, this option is also anti-establishment in a way that the movement is not. Also, this path is not necessarily in line step by step on foreign policy and economic issues with the three factions outlined above. Mike Huckabee flirted with economic equity arguments in 2008, but never went quite far enough to establish a real break here. In the long run, a real break with Republican core stances on certain issues, such as tax policy or immigration, with a reemphasis on cultural issues, could be an intriguing strategy for the GOP.  This strategy could finally open the GOP tent to many African American and Latino voters, who tend to be more socially conservative. While this may sound drastic, such a realignment would not necessarily be anything new in American politics. American history suggests that fundamental political realignments may occur every three to four decades. If you consider 2006-2010 a realignment period (some scholars argue that a realignment normally includes three consecutive elections with the same dynamic trend, although there is generally a critical election) that has finally ended the political equilibrium that has existed since 1968 or 1980 or 1994 (depending on when you define end of the Fifth Party System), then it is still unclear exactly what equilibrium may exist by the middle part of next decade. In fact, some scholars argue that we are currently in the middle of a disalignment, and the exact composition of the Sixth Party System is yet to be set in stone. (Admittedly, with Republican actions in recent years and the rise of Obama, this sort of realignment is probably not realistic for at least a decade or more.)

5. Rockefeller Revisited

Current Leaders: Colin Powell, Jim Huntsman, Charlie Crist, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Tom Ridge

Potential 2012 Candidate:  Tom Ridge

This is the old, moderate, and even sometimes liberal Republican party. And it also could be the new Republican Party that emerges out a possible realignment period. At least in the short term (2012), this looks like the only faction that could actually stand a chance at winning a general election at the presidential level. However, although more popular overall, this faction no longer has many votes within the Republican Party itself. As moderate Republicans have become independents or Democrats in recent years, the Party has essentially purged itself of many of these sane voices. For example, while Republican Colin Powell has a 70% approval rating in the latest CNN poll of all voters, only 64% of Republicans approve of him. When a greater combined percentage of Democrats and independents approve of a Republican than Republicans, chances for a like-minded moderate winning a Republican primary are slim to none. Smartly, Obama and many Democrats know that this is the only faction of Republicans that could beat them in the short term and have strategically moved to the center on several key peripheral (in their mind) issues to ensure that most of those who switched party affiliation in the past 4 to 8 years will remain Democrats or independents throughout the Obama years. This virtually eliminates the GOP’s best hope for 2012, nominating a moderate voice. Further, the best and brightest potential presidential candidate for the GOP out of this moderate wing, Utah governor Jim Huntsman, was recently appointed by Obama to be Ambassador to China.  With Hillary and Huntsman on board, Obama has continued to marginalize those who he sees as political threats. It’s no coincidence that David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and presumed reelection captain, said publicly 10 days before the appointment that Huntsman was his greatest worry for 2012.

Who Will Win Out?

As the Republicans continue their internal fight out of the wilderness, everyone will speculate about who will emerge out of this power vacuum. While a month, let alone a year, is an eternity in politics, if I were to guess right now, I would predict the following:

The Three Headed Monster of Gingrich-Cheney-Limbaugh will continue to dominate the conversation through the 2010 elections. At that time, as the Republicans gear up for 2012, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee will all emerge as serious presidential contenders. Notice how I did not mention any of the moderate Rockefeller Republicans in that list. Right now, I simply don’t see anyone emerging. Possibly Tom Ridge, but I wouldn’t bet on it. While I think Romney would be the most competitive general election candidate out of the four names listed above, I still think all four would lose pretty handily. Huckabee may be the best hope for some sort of outside-the-box, realignment election. Gingrich is the worst for the short term and the long term, but next to Romney, may have the best shot at the nomination. However, by 2014 or 2016, I believe that either the movement or Huckabee wing will emerge. In many aspects, both of these options represent a complete destruction of the Republican status quo and establishment. The movement was meant to elect Republicans, not to actually run the party from within. The Southern strategy will have finally come full circle.

So what happens if and when the movement does finally completely take over the party? The movement could then continue down the death spiral to irrelevance, leading to a possible reemergence of a moderate wing of the GOP or a formidable new second party to fill that vacuum (assuming the Dems don’t totally co-opt the center, which may lead to a leftist party).  Finally, although unlikely, a unification of populist elements under the guise of cultural conservatism, racial tolerance, economic equity, and/or freer migration of people is another intriguing possibility for a potential new period in American political history.

And you wonder why they call it the wilderness….