"How Obama’s nomination of republican Chuck Hagel could trigger the demise of the republican party"

[applegrove]

How Obama’s nomination of republican Chuck Hagel could trigger the demise of the republican party

Stabley Times

http://www.stableytimes.com/featured/how-obamas-nomination-of-republican-chuck-hagel-could-trigger-the-demise-of-the-republican-party/1157/

"SNIP............................................

It’s not that Obama necessarily set a trap for republicans by nominating a republican for Secretary of Defense. In fact it’s not the first time he’s done so. But the nomination of Robert Gates in 2009 met with rubber-stamp approval from republicans in congress because not only was he a republican, he was already the Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and had already proven himself on the job. But Gates retired, and now the appointment of Hagel presents republicans with a no win scenario: either they support one of their own and allow Obama to boast of a bipartisan cabinet, or they fight against a democrat president’s nomination of a republican cabinet member. If it’s the latter, republicans in charge risk being seen by the public as not merely petty or obstructionist, but instead as downright maniacal. And while the Tea Party might love that, it could cost the party its moderate voters. And history has shown that any political party which loses its middle tends to fade from the American landscape shortly thereafter.

The Whig Party was the last major U.S. political party to go by the wayside, but not the first. In each instance of an American party’s demise, the beginning of the end came when the party pivoted to a sufficient extreme that its more moderate supporters became too apathetic to vote, switched sides, or started a new party of their own. The extremists who remain end up taking the party to even more of an extreme, and in doing do they lose their ability to win a national election. And each time a party has fractured to where it no longer even has a chance in the presidential election, support and funding tend to dry up in congressional and gubernatorial elections thereafter. If the republicans publicly oppose the nomination of republican Hagel, moderate conservatives may decide they’ve seen enough, and that they’d rather switch to the democratic party and try to steer it in a moderate direction than stick with a republican party that’s gone so absurdly extremist that it’s objecting to the idea of a republican Secretary of Defense. Without that middle, the republican party could end up nominating an extremist like Rick Santorum or Rand Paul in 2016, whose publicly stated views are so far outside the American mainstream that they’d have no chance of being competitive against the likes of someone like Hillary Clinton. And a blowout victory in 2016, which would be the third democratic presidential victory in a row, would be a body blow which would leave most members of the party – from elected republican officials to republican voters – abandoning ship…

Nature abhors a vacuum, so even if many moderate republican politicians did jump to the democratic party for safety, another party of some type would rise up to take the place of the republican party, which would still manage to elect some congressmen in severely conservative states, but not enough to hold up the agenda of the majority. Within a decade thereafter, there would be no republican party on a national level. And the fight against Hagel, if there is one, could go down in history as the ripping point which signaled the impending collapse.


............................................SNIP"

[Benton D Struckcheon]

1. It just could also...

...mean the demise of the Democratic Party.
I have a book on my shelf, highly entertaining, named "The Strange Death of Liberal England". It's about how the Liberal Party was marginalized by the Tories on the right and Labor on the left after the House of Lords lost the right to veto a budget over in England. The Liberals had guys like Lloyd George who were dealmakers, the trouble with that being that the right or left wing of the Liberal Party would wind up mad at him when he made a deal they didn't like. The Liberals continued as a force because they could always point at the Lords and ask the left if they really wanted to be ruled by those guys.
Once the Lords lost their last real power, though, and that wasn't an issue anymore, Labor made big gains and the Liberals shrank rapidly.
So, if the Republicans lose their middle and wink out, weirdly, the Dems might be the losers, since the substantial part of the Democrats who are to the left of Obama, who is a sort of modern Lloyd George, could easily bolt and form a left party, leaving the Dems in the middle between that left party and the righties over in the Republican party, or what's left of it or whatever succeeds it.
We'd go back to two parties again, but it would be a way right party and a way left party, with a small and powerless middle.
I'm not really sure I'd want that.

[TwilightGardener]

2. The Repubs are betting that their (Adelson/Koch/Kristol supported) swiftboat campaign against

Hagel will smear him beyond recognition so that even his own wife and children won't love him anymore. Repub Senators that he served with treat him like some sort of anti-American lefty radical stranger. So I doubt the ordinary brain-dead rank and file GOPers will remember or care that he is a conservative Repub or a combat veteran--they just know that once Obama likes him, he stops being a Republican. And Repubs hate veterans, anyway.

[MotherPetrie]

3. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

[quinnox]

5. lol, exactly

I'd say while I like Hagel being nominated for the spot, it would be a just a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bit of hyperbole to say it will cause the destruction of the GOP.

[lolly]

4. I don't think the money will ever dry up for Republicans/Conservatives

The Kochs and their ilk will always pour enough money into electing people to destroy working and middle class people to keep the Republican party viable.