Expecting the Republican party to split?

[dccrossman]

Maybe its too much to hope for, but I think there's significant reason to expect the Republican party to actually split over this election. If the polls bear out, Obama will not just win, but win big. We all know, that even in a year when Democrats have everything going their way, how unlikely and amazing his emergence really is.

Back to the split...

There are some Republicans that truly believe that Palin is the future of the party and are taking issue with those that don't line up. Then, there are the slightly more intelligent ones that know she is mindless and simply panders to a small a shrinking base. We may finally see the Ralph Reed portion of the party become a party that is built around being purely socially conservation and damn any other positions. Next to that will be the party that is Libertarian lite. Libertarian leaning but fiercely capitalist. The people that actually believe that people born into poverty can claw their own way out with school vouchers and hard work, and that Medicare and Social Security are the govt taking your money and managing it worse than you would.

If this kind of split happens (it appears to be based on the (R)'s supporting Obama because of Palin, one way or another), then what kind of effect does this have on the next 16 or 32 years?

Now, I could be crazy, but I'm curious what other DUers think.

Hopefully, I'll get enough traffic to get a feel for it.

Peace!

[Democat]

1. Even if they lose, I don't think they will split

Neither side would be willing to give up the existing "Republican Party" name and machinery. I have no doubt they will fight bitterly, but in the end they will come together somehow to try to "take back America" in 2010 and beyond.

[Dennis Donovan]

2. The GOP will do more than split - it'll SPLINTER...

...into tiny little pieces.

[FamousMortimer]

6. I've heard quite a bit of talk about it where I live

Missouri is pretty red except the cities and this one truck stop type place I go to eat sometimes is full of arguing between theocrat types and the more traditional republicans. I would like to see it happen but I doubt either side would be willing to give up the name to the others.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. "Shards" comes to mind....................

Nice, tiny little fragments.

A thing of beauty.

[gollygee]

4. I think there has been some level of split already

I know a pretty good number of Republicans voting for Obama. Just like a lot of Democrats voted for Regan once upon a time. Those Republicans who are voting for Obama constitute a split. Whether they form their own party or just go back and forth between parties for a while like the Regan Democrats did is still to be seen.

[gratuitous]

5. I don't think the GOP will split

It will hold itself together, but I expect to see some serious retrenching and a whole new pack of lies assembled to bamboozle the American people. They're going to jettison the front-and-center nature of most of their social engineering issues such as abortion and gay rights. Abortion, because they had a clear field to criminalize it for six years, and failed to do anything. Even the most stone-brained troglodytes are beginning to catch on that abortion is being used solely as a way to raise money and stir up hatred. Gay rights because as the generations change, it's a loser as an issue, appealing to a smaller and smaller slice of American bigotry.

[LisaLynne]

7. I think this is the last time the Republicans are going to have ...

the Christian Fundamentalists on their side. I think the top brass, the fiscal conservatives, the less radical religous people who just vote Republican because they are socially conservative (read: racist, sexist, homophobic, etc, IMHO) but who don't really want a theocracy in the US, see that Palin is too far out there and stupid to boot. However, I think the fundamentalists will accept nothing less than one of their own (and a REAL one this time, not W) and when the rest of the party doesn't want that to happen -- that's when the split will occur.

The Republican party has been using the Christian Fundamentalists for years now -- but they really haven't done nearly enough for that group and I think it's slowly dawning on some of them how they've been used. I think when it comes time to start looking for the candidate for 2012, things are going to really come to a head. I see the Fundamentalists pushing the issue and the rest of them pushing back and ... BOOM!

At least, I hope so! :)

[KharmaTrain]

8. The Split Happened A While Ago...

Just look back at the GOOP primaries and see the various candidates and their factions...funides (Hucklenutz), "fiscal" conservatives (Mittens), Neo-Cons (Rudeeeee)...Gramps survived a demolition derby in his own party that is about to turn into a circular firing squad.

The "Raygun Big Tent" has been shreaded by this regime...abusing their own constituencies for their own lust of power and greed and as a result its turned the GOOP into a fetid, corupt organization that is short on both ideas and the ability to follow through on them.

Should Senator Obama be victorious and Democrats make big gains across the board, watch the knives really come out (they're already there)...and the party driven further to the right as the "who lost the election" and "whose a "true" conservative" game will play out on our teevee screens.

Cheers...

[frogcycle]

9. not exactly split...

but I expect the core of old-guard Goldwater Republicans to back off on pandering to the extremists and try to put together an actual philosophy

There IS an alternative view of what the national government should do and if they stopped just chanting "get smaller; do nothing" they could perhaps make their case to some middle-of-the-roaders.

The odd-couple marriage they came from the "Southern Strategy" has pretty much run its course.

Since an awful lot of the so-called "leaders" of the party came in to power as PART of that strategy, there are few of the old guard left to try to put humpty dumpty together again.

I don't know about the comments that neither side would want to give up the name, though. Maybe both would prefer a new brand.

[crikkett]

10. Two reasons why I think you're right

1) GOP accusations that the Democratic Party would split is a telling clue.

2) The Shadow convention that Ron Paul ran in St. Paul across the river from the RNC boasted 10,000 attendees. That could be more than attended the RNC convention.

[Tutonic]

11. Split as in run toward an exit. Yes.

[MineralMan]

12. More Like Fracture

There's more than two GOP factions. I expect the whole thing to turn into ill-smelling fragments after this election. Here's my list of those fragments, from the bottom-feeders to the hopeful:

1. Religious Fanatics and Dominionists
2. Gun Rights Nutcases
3. Creepy Civil War Advocates
4. Closet Racists
5. Extreme homophobes.
6. Limited Government Libertaricans
7. The "Hot for Palin" pervs.
8. Folks with IQs under 80, bless their hearts.
9. Legacy Republicans
10. Convertible Republicans who can be convinced to become Democrats

[kenny blankenship]

13. They can't do that. Without their rural "social conservative" base

the Republicans are a party of 15% of the people, tops. Fewer than 15% of American households make 100,000/yr in combined/total income or more. How can the party of Big Business run a democratic country when fewer than 15% of the households in that country qualify as upper-middle class or above?

The Repukes always relied on poorer, mostly rural white people, people with microscopic hopes of attaining the American dream aside from winning the Lottery, being motivated to vote Republican somehow. They don't get these voters with promises of relaxed banking regulations or blind-eye enforcement of environmental standards, or tacit cooperation with union busting. We know how they do it: their campaigns are almost always based on disqualifying accusations. They accuse their Democratic party opponents of being
A) covertly aligned with foreign enemies like International Soviet Communism, or
B) corrupting the youth with godlessness, or
C) being in league with the Devil, spreading witchcraft and blasphemy, harlotry, sodomy, or
D) plotting to bring down the White Race (Real Americans) through racial mixing (immigration and integration).

Usually it's a rich broth of all of these accusations mixed together. By motivating their base over their resentment and fears of minorities, feminism, atheists, Jews, homosexuals, immigrants and the heathen furriner countries they come from, and anyone who comes from a big city, or the inner city, Republicans patch up a 20-30%. deficit to achieve rough parity with Democrats in voter registration. Loyalty to the Republicans brings their rural base no relief from their day to day problems. But they get these voters because these voters don't expect relief. This base blames a large part of their material woes on supernatural causes. The vast majority of the people in this constituency belong to churches, and the churches keep their congregations marching to the polls "to hold back Satan" or to bring victory and glory to King Jesus, or some other psychotic claptrap. The GOP base don't expect their lives to actually get better here on Earth; their lives can only get better when Jesus comes back, or the Devil is banished from National Parks or birth control is outlawed. Which is great for office holding Republicans because their actual concerns as a party have much more to do with acting as the agents of Big Business, (serving Mammon), the source of their campaign money. They are just corporate lobbyists with elective offices or positions in the Executive branch. And the worse their corporatist policies have made day to day life for their voter base, the more fanatically it seemed their base would support them. At least that's the way it has worked 'til now.

Lately the social conservative base has been taking over the corporate gangster superstructure of the GOP. But the free booting corporatists can't hope to amount to a majority party on their own. That means they must try to convert the Democrats as the party with majority status to pure laissez-faire ideology. They have a beachhead in the DLC, but the mainstream of the Democratic Party is no longer listening. That leaves them with old their snake handling, flat earther friends in the Republican Party and nowhere to go.

[Javaman]

14. I expect the neo-cons to be shed, I also see a marginalling of the fundies. nt

[codjh9]

15. I hope so, but I'll only believe it when I see it.... n/t