The Future Of The "Republican" Party

Nobody — I mean nobody — knows what is going on in the heads of “Republicans.” I think this is true mainly because nobody truly knows what a “Republican” is nowadays.

There is a base of party people, the ones who run the offices, the websites, fund raise and throw corn roasts. These are the McCain people who are now Romney people. Beyond that base, nobody knows.

We may be witnessing a re-make of the “Republican” party. I recently changed my registration from
Independent to Republican. Tea Partiers who are Constitutionalists and small government individuals may be supplanting the Religious Right as the most politically powerful faction of the party. We’ll see more about this in South Carolina and Florida.

I don’t believe that these two factions — the Religious Right and the Tea Partiers — are necessarily mutually exclusive. I think the number of single issue voters in the party is dwindling. A lot of the animosity between backers of particular candidates stems from fear based on mistaken impressions and media bias. If Ron Paul wins the nomination I think people will come to learn that charges against him of racism and homophobia are unfounded. They will also learn that he is not the Lindbergh isolationist he is made out to be, although he is definitely not an interventionist. He will defend the country vigorously against all enemies foreign and domestic, “defend” being the operative word. They will find he is anti-abortion and pro-family, but not dictatorial about it.

In short, there is a “real” Ron Paul out there that people can come to know and accept. He’s not changed since the early days when he first came on the scene.

Romney is a different case. He will have a harder time uniting the party because there might not be a “real” Romney there for people to get to know. He says there is, but he’s said a lot of things over the years — many of them contradictory. Not so with Paul. Moreover, Paul’s general philosophy is accepting of diverse, but cooperative opinion. Pro-life individuals, gays, gun rights advocates and other traditionally single issue voters will not have anything to fear from a Paul administration. His position is to de-politicize and localize these issues, not federally mandate them. You cannot say the same about Romney.

A Romney nomination might mean the end of the Republican Party. Ironically, a Paul nomination might save the Party from collapse, although it’s power structure will be much different from the way it is now.