With the seemingly-likely blowout of the GOP from the halls of power, there has been a lot of talk about what will happen to the conservative moment. Blogger Peter Suderman believes it’s a bit premature to say that conservatism is doomed:
I don’t want to go too far down the road of arguing that the right doesn’t have problems. It does, and I desperately hope that it takes this current moment of confusion and anxiety as the impetus for some serious soul-searching and reform. But the drama and high emotions that coincide with election years can easily be taken to mean more than they do, and the results of an election or two don’t always signal the sort of political catastrophe that many are predicting for current GOP.
However, Daniel Larison argues that things are terribly bad in conservative-land:
It is fair to say that Republicans–and conservatives–have not faced a situation like this one since the eve of the 1964 landslide loss. While the result will not be that lopsided, this will probably be the second-worst defeat of a Republican presidential ticket since WWII, and it will be the first time in over a century that Republicans are not going to win an open presidential election. Unlike Goldwater 1964, however, McCain has no
coherent message and leaves no legacy to be seized on later. There are times when parties lose elections badly but find a coherent set of arguments that can make them competitive soon thereafter, and then there is the case of the Tories after 1997 as they stumbled and bumbled from one leader to the next as obsessed with Europe as McCain and the rest of the GOP leadership have been obsessed with earmarks. The GOP’s alienation of the rising cohort of 18-29 year olds, which it was always going to have difficulty with because of demographic and cultural changes within that cohort, is going to reverberate for decades to come, even though it is the youngest voters who have the greatest incentives to respond to a new agenda of entitlement reform and fiscal responsibility. The GOP is going to find itself increasingly saddled with aging Boomer voters who will reject the kind of policy innovation that is needed to offer a coherent alternative.
So, what is going to be the outcome of the Republican Party after November 4?
My answer? We don’t know.
It’s nice to think we might know what could happen, but the reality is that things are not so set in stone as to the future. In my opinion, it’s really all up to how people respond to the situation. In short, it’s up to conservatives to determine who to react. I do think there are several possible outcomes:
It’s fun speculating what the future might hold for the GOP, but the fact is, we don’t know. It really depends on many factors: the economy, foreign policy and other events. We can lay out possible outcomes, but the one certainty that I know is that humans are incredibly illogical creatures.
My hope is that the time spent in the political wilderness will be short and helpful. But the amount of time spent out of power hinges on how Republicans want to respond, and not on the chatter of people like me.