The Future of the POS

Any political party that lasts long enough becomes a makeshift - a coalition of disparate interests held together more by duct tape and the lust for power than any larger purpose. So it is with the Republicans, and there is nothing like voter repudiation to force a certain amount of re-evaluation.

The modern Republican Party, that is, the party of Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Gingrich has dominated American politics for most of the past forty years. That circumstance derives mainly from its status as the beneficiary of Southern racial resentment in the wake of Johnson's civil rights legislation, but the conservatives also created a set of institutions dedicated to promoting their causes: the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Cato Institute. Superficially these were modeled on the Brookings Institute and similar think tanks, but those who dared to actually think were punished by expulsion. The real mission of these conservative "stink tanks" was propaganda - specifically propaganda designed to protect the wealth of their wealthy sponsors. The third leg of this Republican stool is commercial Christianity - the James Dobsons and all their ilk who have done so well here in this World by Christianity even if they won't pass the camel - eye-of-needle test for entrance into the next. Their issues are abortion and gay marriage, though I think only the first has any future.

The voters who voted for Obama and the Democrats this year were mainly young people, blacks and Hispanics. Those who voted Republican were old and white. These facts present a very tough challenge to a Republican future.

A more profound challenge lies in the fact that we go to the present sorry pass by following many of the same disastrous policies that led to Hoover's great depression. Only the hard core self-deluded believe that those policies - the policies that continue to be promoted by the Hoover institute and other right wing stink tanks - will get us out of this mess.

Obama will need not only great skill but considerable luck to extricate us. If he succeeds Republicans may spend another thirty years in the wilderness. If he fails due to Republican obstruction, the POS may disappear forever.

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