The coalition formed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s -- big business, evangelicals, libertarians, southerners, blue collar "Reagan Democrats" and Cold Warriors -- may be on its last legs.
Absent a charismatic individual like FDR or St. Ronald to hold it together, the GOP has fractured into board room/country club types (Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman), libertarians (Ron Paul), culture warriors (Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry) and foreign policy hawks (Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Romney -- sort of -- but not Huntsman necessarily, and definitely not Paul). Whew! This is confusing.
So what happens to the GOP when Romney -- finally -- gets the nomination? Will Paul mount a third-party bid? If not, will his supporters back Romney, vote Libertarian or just stay home? And what about Newt's and the two Ricks' supporters? Will they be motivated to go out and campaign for the rich Mormon guy from Massachusetts?
Barring some unforeseen downturn in the economy, I expect President Obama will cruise to reelection in November. And whither the GOP? Unless another Ronald Reagan magically appears on the scene, it will be navel-gazing time -- for a long while.
(Read the rest of it here.)
The Economist had a piece this week, "Incoherent Party, Incoherent Candidates," which had a similar theme (my emphasis):
Republicans' disenchantment with their current presidential candidates is not an incidental characteristic of this crop of candidates. It's a structural feature of a contemporary Republican Party whose pieces don't hang together. Pro-Iraq-war neoconservative Republicans cannot actually live with Ron Paul Republicans. Wall Street-hating anti-bail-out Republicans cannot actually live with Wall Street-working bail-out-receiving Republicans. Evangelical-conservative Republicans cannot actually live with libertarian, socially liberal Republicans. Deficit-slashing Republicans cannot live with tax-slashing Republicans. Medicare-cutting Republicans cannot live with Medicare-defending Republicans. These factions have been glued together over the past three years by the intensity of their partisan hatred for Barack Obama, and all of the underlying resentments that antipathy masks. Republicans have buried their differences by assaulting everything Mr Obama supports, and because Mr Obama is a pretty middle-of-the-road politician, that includes a whole lot of things that many Republicans used to support. They are disenchanted with their candidates because their candidates are incoherent, but their candidates are incoherent because the base is incoherent. If the GOP wins this election, the party's leaders are going to be confronted with that incoherence pretty quickly. Unfortunately, so will the rest of us.
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