After the Republicans get their asses handed to them in the election, they'll need a soul search

[MrScorpio]

The GOP is broken, there's no absence of evidence about this at all. They are broken simply because they've given up the middle to become a right fringe party… With the direction that they're taking, they are well on their way into becoming a permanent fringe minority party.

Unfortunately, for the Democratic Party, this is going to be really bad in the long run. It's going to create all the problems inherent with de facto one party rule. Even if we take control, we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that it's a good thing. Remember the old adage about the corrupting influence of power, y'all.

But yes…They've simply lost their hold on reality, an irresponsible ideological turn which has poisoned the body politic and the electorate. Now, of course, I'm quite happy to see Democrats pick up the broken pieces to take over from the shards that the zealots are leaving behind… Even as a good number of Tea Bagger pols will eventually find their way to an unemployment line. However, we can't fully expect Democrats to fill in the mostly conservative regions of America.

Although, we'll would have Democrats in name only filling in places that were rejected by the completely batshit crazy so-called "Republican" Tea Baggers, it's a poor substitution for winning the hearts and minds of these areas with the strength of our arguments and ideas alone.

What kind of Democrats are we going to have run in those places, new Dixiecrats? Do we really want that to happen to us?

No, the GOP needs to get their shit together and start being a center right, truly conservative and responsible political party again. They have to do this for all of our sakes. They abandonment of sanity can't be the catalyst for driving our side further to the right in order to fill in an ideological vacuum.

Nature abhors a vacuum, even a political one.

[jberryhill]

1. They will conclude Romney was not far enough to the right

I would have preferred they nominated Santorum or Perry, so they could have a clean experiment in nominating a genuine right wingnut, instead of this bizarre Romney character.

[MrScorpio]

3. I'm not saying that the process will start reversing once he loses

I fully expect someone like Santorum to run as the GOP nominee 2016. That person will lose as well.

When Republican losing becomes epidemic, their big money donors will leave that party in droves. But where do you think that the rich assholes will go?

Democrats, of course. People like the Kochs will start financing business super-friendly Democrats.

I don't want that to happen and I'm sure that you don't want it to happen either.

[graham4anything]

2. Hillary vs. Jeb in 2016 will decide the fate of the world

We must stick together and defeat Jeb and the normal not crazy republicans forever.

But to win, we gotta remain as one.
1968 showed what fractures can mean, 1980 showed.

2012 shows what a united democrat party can do.
or go backward.

it's as simple as ONE.

[monmouth]

4. Ridding themselves of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove would be a good start...n/t

[MrScorpio]

5. …And dumping people like Coulter and Limbaugh would be a great second move nt

[kurt_cagle]

6. Tectonic Shifts

Political parties in the US are a lot like tectonic plates. New parties form in response to economic changes. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Democrats were the labor party, the Republicans the investor party. In the 1960s, that changed - the Democrats being the party of Civil Rights and Womens issues, and a lot of the old southern labor movement at the same time had shifted into business owners and resource mavens, becoming increasingly conservative in the process. Civil Rights issues dominated the Democratic party in the latter part of the twentieth century, but again as those people became older they became more conservative in turn, and more business-centric. The aging GOP is becoming increasingly obsolete, but the Democrats are themselves splitting along centrist and progressive lines, and the progressives generally shade into the libertarian along at least one axis. This group is increasingly focused on local action, decentralization, computer technology, and new energy, even as parts of the Democrats are looking increasingly like centrist Republicans in the mold of Phil Specter or Olympia Snowe (or, for that matter, Bill Clinton).

I suspect that should the Dems find themselves completely in power, that you'll see this fracturing becoming stronger. The progressives, being younger and more "radical" will likely split from the Democratic party first, and will then cast about for a coalition partner, which I expect will end up being the Ron Paul techno-Libertarians. Both tend to align fairly closely on social issues, both tend to have a concern about too much concentration of power in any part of the economy, the biggest differences being effectively the role of personal responsibility vs. community involvement. In the end this fissure will likely be that party's tectonic fault lines, but that may be decades in the future.