Interesting! It's definitely the neocon/paleocon/theocon/corporate-con fissures that make me wonder about the future of the Republican party. So long as you had the money of the corporate cons married to the ability of theocons to get the rank and file to the voting booth, they were a force to be reckoned with (and provided power for the neocons to carry out their agenda), but increasingly those two groups seem deeply unhappy with each other. And without that alliance, their power disintegrates: the theocons don't have the money, and the corporate cons don't have the numbers.
My guess -- thanks to those institutional forces your link nods to -- is that we're more likely to see some group (probably the theocons) hive off into a minority third party like the Greens, while some kind of rejuvenation morphs the remainder into a new and more viable form under the same name. In other words, more or less the creation of a new party, but still calling themselves Republicans. (Which is, as I understand it, kind of what happened to the Democratic Party between the Civil War days and now. Same name, substantially different agenda.)
That article makes a good point that we effectively do our coalition-building before elections instead of after. That put into focus for me the otherwise baffling difference between our resolutely two-party system and, well, practically any other country.
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yati
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Date: 2008-10-29 01:50 am (UTC)My guess -- thanks to those institutional forces your link nods to -- is that we're more likely to see some group (probably the theocons) hive off into a minority third party like the Greens, while some kind of rejuvenation morphs the remainder into a new and more viable form under the same name. In other words, more or less the creation of a new party, but still calling themselves Republicans. (Which is, as I understand it, kind of what happened to the Democratic Party between the Civil War days and now. Same name, substantially different agenda.)
That article makes a good point that we effectively do our coalition-building before elections instead of after. That put into focus for me the otherwise baffling difference between our resolutely two-party system and, well, practically any other country.