The Republican Party after Cheney, Bush and Rove

Harper's Scott Horton points to an important development, one he apparently posted before the election results started coming in but which the results largely bore out (The Southern Strategy Comes of Age No Comment blog 11/04/08:

When the votes have been counted tonight, the G.O.P. will reap the final fruits of its Southern Strategy. The Republican Party will have transformed itself from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Old Confederacy. We will find that John McCain has achieved his best results in the Old Confederacy - to which only a sprinkling of thinly populated states of the Plains and Mountain West will be added (states that share strong demographic similarities with the "Confederate" states). The core of the congressional G.O.P. will be drawn from the Old South. Moreover, surveying the party’s leadership from the last decade, the predominance of white male Southerners will be clear. The 2008 elections will likely see Republicans falling to their Democratic adversaries in New England (which is now unlikely to return a single Republican to the House of Representatives), the Midwest, the Southwest, and the Pacific states.

Much as the post-Thatcher Conservatives in Britain ceased to be a British party and instead became the party of the England’s prosperous southeast, the Republicans will cease to be a national party. They will instead be a regional party. ... The nation’s political pendulum swings constantly, and the Republican Party will reshape itself and will come to power again. But the Republicans hold on to a final redoubt that offers them little sustenance and little hope for an easy rally and return. This reveals the serious miscalculation of a master tactician. It is the legacy of Karl Rove. [my emphasis]

Tags: republican party, republicans