Well, white-identity runs pretty deep in America, even in the well-intended...

The Underground Railroad

You are so right, BooMan.  The Republicans are a Know Nothing Party representing the shadow side of the American psyche.  I agree they will not win another presidential election until they accomplish a major-major overhaul.  Who knows, perhaps they will follow the Whigs on the road to extinction.  With Palin at their standard bearer, I suspect this road to oblivion will become a super highway.

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? Kabir

The GOP (especially in its raw Palinist form) is a know-nothing party that denies science, is completely white-identity-centric, feeds off hate and fear of non-white-non-straight-non-Christian people, and will not win another national election until it changes completely.

I'm afraid this isn't true.  Because people don't tend to vote parties into power, they vote corrupt and/or useless parties out of power.  That's not just true of the US - that's true of democracies all over the world.  As long as the ruling party doesn't tip from "not bad enough" to "bad enough" they can retain power.  Once they make that tip, they get thrown out an a new party is put in power.

The Republicans have crowed for years about how their ideas were what made them popular among the voters.  But really they've been riding on a few things - outrage from LBJ and the Democrats enacting civil rights in the 60s, outrage at the total mess that was Vietnam, and outrage at the handling of the energy/economic crisis in the 70s.  Those things pushed the Republicans into power (slowly - Congress especially realigns very slowly, as do the states).  (And yeah, Clinton was in there.  But Clinton actually governed pretty much like a Republican who was actually interested in governing would govern.  He didn't really challenge the Republican way of doing things - he embraced it and took credit for it.  I've often called him the "best Republican President since Eisenhower", and I still stand by that assessment).

So what happened two years ago - and what carries forward now - is a new realignment based on new outrages that Republicans have ownership of.  Iraq/Afghanistan and a new energy/ecnomic crisis are at the forefront, making for an eerie parallel to the Republican rise to power.  The rest of the realignment is going to go slowly - much as the Republican realignment has for the last 30 years - but it will follow.

But eventually there will be NEW outrages directed at Democrats.  The economy will tank again, and they'll probably start another war eventually.  (My guess is that we're talking longer-term here - 20-30 years out).  The Republican party could well make a comeback in that kind of environment regardless of whether they've turned themselves completely into a mouthbreathing party of know-nothings or they've come back in from the wilderness to become a sane party.  It won't matter - when the current party's time in power is up they'll be replaced by whatever party happens to be handy at the time.

Which is why I'm pretty desperate for Republicans to reform themselves.  Maybe look back at the party of Eisenhower for inspiration (or even Nixon pre-Southern Strategy for the love of Grod).  Because I'm only going to be in my fifties or sixties 20-30 years from now, and I'm not looking forward to the theocrats getting another turn at the wheel.

It's all showbiz: Forget Red vs Blue, It's the Educated vs People Easily Fooled By Propoganda