THE FUTURE….So what does the political world look like on Wednesday if the gurus at ABC News are right? They all announced their guesses Sunday morning, and the average of their projections is 352 electoral votes for Obama plus a pickup for the Democrats of 24 seats in the House and 7 or 8 seats in the Senate.
If this happens, the upshot is that both parties get moved to the right. Most of the Democratic pickups will be in centrist states and districts, which will move the Democratic caucus moderately toward the center. At the same time, it will remove these centrist states and districts from the Republican side, which will make the GOP caucus not just smaller, but even more conservative than it is now. As a touchstone, the Republican Study Committee, the hardcore conservative wing of the House GOP contingent, currently represents a little over half of their total strength. After Tuesday they’re likely to represent nearly two-thirds, which means that the rump of the House Republican caucus remaining after Tuesday is likely to be almost entirely in the hands of the most faithful of the movement conservative faithful. These true believers are not likely to give in quickly to the notion that hardcore conservative ideology needs a bit of freshening up if the party wants to regain its competitive edge. On the contrary, they’ll probably double down, convinced that they lost only because John McCain and George Bush abandoned the true faith that America truly yearns for.
Will these folks rally around Sarah Palin as their conservative savior? I continue to see that as unlikely, but who knows? Desperate people do desperate things, and there’s no telling if they’ll somehow convince themselves that she represents their future.
Anyway, consider this an open thread. I’m not saying anything original here, just sort of noodling about how long it’s going to take for the Republican Party to start making a comeback after their losses this year. My guess is that the business wing of the party will become (partly, reluctantly) reconciled to a Democratic majority, if for no other reason than self-preservation, which will leave the evangelical/Southern wing of the party in effective control. And if that turns out to be the case, the GOP is in for a very, very long stay in the wilderness.
