Let’s assume, for the moment, the worst for the Republican Party. (Which I view as one of the five or six most important civic institutions in America.)<\/p>\n
It’s November 5th. Barack Obama — a man described by his enemies as the most liberal man in the Senate — is president-elect.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from dreaded San Francisco, presides over a Democratic majority of nearly a hundred seats.<\/p>\n
Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid has captured a filibuster-proof sixty-vote majority in the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n
All three outcomes, while far from certain, have entered the realm of the plausible. After a generation of dominance, the GOP finds itself utterly marginalized.<\/p>\n
The question on that morning will be, what next? How do Republicans rebuild?<\/p>\n
Mainstream journalists will likely compare the event to the 1994 Republican Revolution — suggesting that the GOP can simply follow the Democratic model to fashion a resurgence.<\/p>\n
But the truth is that even at their peak Republicans managed only a narrow majority in both houses of Congress.<\/p>\n
Democrats will have achieved a level of supremacy not seen for decades in American politics.<\/p>\n
Which means that Republicans have a far bigger job ahead. And their cautionary example should be Britain’s Conservatives.<\/p>\n
When Labor finally swept aside the Thatcher Tories, in 1997, they ushered in an era of irrelevance for Conservatives that has continued for eleven long years.<\/p>\n
To avoid that fate, America’s conservatives will be forced to consider some of the basic assumptions of their movement. These include:<\/p>\n
1. A cultural loyalty to traditional, rural values — a tough sell in America’s increasingly urban culture.<\/p>\n
2. A half-hearted interest in appealing to racial and ethnic groups. As the U.S. emerges as a white-minority society, the GOP has some soul searching to do.<\/p>\n
3. A focus on sexual and bedroom issues, ranging from opposition to homosexual marriage to discomfort with sex education and fierce hostility to abortion. (Yes, these issues matter – but should they be a chief preoccupation of our politicians?)<\/p>\n
4. A relative disinterest in the environment. “Drill-baby-drill” might work with the Republican base, but polls show that a growing numbers of Americans want to live and vote green. It’s an economic issue, but it’s also a moral one.<\/p>\n
5. Moderates are quislings. Newt Gingrich reserved his angriest rhetoric for centrists within his own party. Tom DeLay was known as the Hammer for the way he treated his own rank-and-file members. But maybe those Rockefeller Republicans have something to teach their party?<\/p>\n
Maybe in the new America and the new GOP, the Patakis and the Schwarzeneggers have a brighter future than the ideological firebrands?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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