I think we may be witnessing the demise of the GOP

[jeff47]

49. In the past, this kind of thing has ended one of three ways.

1) Party that was going extreme regains sanity. Normalcy returns pretty quickly.

2) Party that was going extreme whithers away and is replaced by new party at old party's sane position. Takes longer than #1.

3) Party that was going extreme whithers. Opposing party keeps trying to move into the ground held by sane parts of crazy party, in an attempt to vacuum up the sane supporters of the crazy party. This causes the opposing party to stop representing it's base, and that base seeks a new party. Normalcy returns after a very long time - the parties are effectively switching places on the left-right spectrum.

#1 is not going to happen. Republicans show absolutely no interest in turning back from insanity, and when they lose they claim the loss was due to insufficient purity instead of their extreme position.

I don't see any evidence of #2 happening. Libertarians don't have anywhere near enough support to displace the religious fundamentalists, for example. So it doesn't look like there's any moderate party who can expand to become the "new Republican party".

So, we're working on #3. the Democrats have been moving to the right to pick up the "sane end" of the Republican party. That's going to be a problem in the long run, because doing that requires leaving the left feeling unrepresented. Do that long enough, and the left will switch to a "new" party. (That party may already exist, the "new" part is becoming one of the two major parties).

There's some evidence that Democratic strategists are starting to realize they actually have a left flank to protect. It would be wonderful if they did, since that would cause us to drift towards #2 instead of #3.