About That Dead Elephant

It's generally not a good idea to predict the actual demise of a whole political party.  I wanna say I recall a time not that long ago when lotsa people were saying the Dems wouldn't survive, and gosh, just look at 'em now.

However, there's plenty to be gained politically by making the Cool Kid appeal - ie: "nobody votes for those guys anymore because they're terminally lame and def un-cool", or "they're so 2006", or "I'll bet they're all Nickelback fans", or whatever.

An awful lot of us just run with the pack.  We pay little or no attention until some encounter when we might say something previously considered hip or evenhanded or otherwise stylish and end up getting the feeling we've made some kind of social error by not being in step with a change in political fashion.  That's why yard signs and bumper stickers work - they give people permission to vote a certain way without having to invest much time or effort in making a committed decision. When we see enough evidence of a sufficient number of other people doing the thinking and taking action, and formulating the rhetoric, we start to feel safe enough to go along with the crowd.

I know a woman who told me straight out last summer that she wouldn't be making up her mind on voting for Obama or Romney until she was sure about "who the nation was backing".

So anyway, from an old(ish) post at Addicting Info, here's some speculation about what's eating the GOP from the inside out:

What Reed, and other party bosses, are ignoring is that in their grab for political power, they attempted to blend together three opposing factors, and the pressure between these groups is about to blow the lid wide open.
These groups are:

Libertarians vs. social conservatives – Social Conservatives want more government intrusion in to people’s lives, the opposite of the Libertarian government-out mentality.

Right-wing populists vs. the pro-business crowd – Populists are against the subsidies which the pro-business groups live on, and they are at each others throats.

Deficit reduction hawks vs. small government activists – Deficit hawks want to reduce the deficit, but a small government cannot manage its deficit due to the lack of revenue. With such opposing demands, it is only a matter of time before they come to blows.

In the recruitment of the radical fringe, what, in ages past, would be the Know-Nothings or the Dixiecrats, the GOP has sown the seeds of its own destruction. Now the party has come to accept it.