This interesting article from Power Line Online (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/01/019467.php) lays out what many in the GOP see happening if Mike Huckabee were to win the GOP nomination. Frankly, it is precisely what I hope will happen because it is the only way the Party will ever save itself from the Christianist strangle hold of the Frankenstein Monster that Karl Rove, Bush and others created out of expediency of the moment as opposed to a long term view. The GOP may be on the verge of finally reaping what it has sowed for the last decade or so. Here are some highlights:
It’s been a long time in coming. For years the Republicans have depended on evangelical voters to assure them control of the White House and at least a fighting representation in both houses of Congress. Sooner or later their most reliable, most motivated constituency would want more than just verbal assurances of support or even votes on issues of importance—abortion, gays in the military, and so forth. Eventually evangelicals would want a president of their own.
With Mike Huckabee’s victory in Iowa, however, the Republican party is now entering what might be called its Jesse Jackson moment. If Huckabee goes on to win more primaries he will have a reasonable claim to the nomination. He may, of course, lose New Hampshire, New York, California and Michigan. But let’s suppose that he manages to win enough primaries in the southern and border states to make the results in those three states irrelevant. It’s all a question of numbers. In spite of itself, the party might end up with him as its nominee, and with it, heading down the shortest road to disaster since the Goldwater debacle of 1964.
Make no mistake about it: an electoral defeat of these dimensions would represent a major watershed in the history of the Republican party. It would be faced with only two possible roads forward. One is to become the party of the religious right, a sectarian agglomeration somewhat like the small ethnic parties in inter-war Europe, perhaps capable of holding some governorships and seats in Congress but never again competitive in a presidential election. The other would be to cut itself free from the religious right and seek to appeal to the wide and growing tranche of independent voters who are socially liberal but economically conservative. In that case the Republican party would gradually resemble some of the “liberal” (that is, conservative) parties who periodically win national elections in Western Europe or Canada. These parties are friendly to market-based solutions to economic problems—that is, they are broadly libertarian.
Think this is impossible? Think again. The business of politicians is first and foremost to get elected, not to preach sermons. A Huckabee nomination would not merely assure a Democratic presidential victory but gains in both houses and a Supreme Court packed with justices somewhat resembling Ruth Bader Ginsberg. But the news is worse than that: even a Huckabee victory in the race to the White House (as difficult as it may be to imagine at this point) would also toll the death kneel of the Republican party as we have known it.
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