Tom Schaller belts out this prediction about how the Republican primary is going to play out.
So allow me to dispatch with all the “it’s way too early” disclaimers and offer a bold prediction about the 2008 presidential contest: Rank-and-file Republicans are going to throw the fight. Rather than make electability
their primary criterion for selecting their nominee, GOP primary voters will opt to send a protest message to the party’s establishment and Beltway insiders by nominating a statement candidate who is none of the Big Three.….
The 2008 nomination is the first, key test of the long-term consequences of this leap. Will it turn out to have been an off-course trip for the Republican Party, during which Gerald Ford-era politicians allowed James
Dobson to steer the vessel toward conservatism’s darkest waters and toward the possibility of minority status for the near term? Or was the Bush 43 era some strange, temporary deviation from the strong-management, secularized, and more socially moderate path that the second term of Ronald Reagan and
Bush 41’s lone term not long ago signaled?
The excerpts I haven’t quoted are at least as intriguing and well worth the subscription to TAPPED to read them . Here’s the thing, conservatism is near death. The religious right/anti-environment/pro-rich/anti-intellectual/anti-gay electorate makes up about 9% of the electorate. Something has to give and it’s most likely a weakening of the position of the anti-taxer coalition, as well the religious right. The irony ofcourse is that even after Iraq, the neo-conservative viewpoint is transcendent. Rudy McRomney or a conservative who can’t win?
Something to say?
