Bring back the 80s

By Fester:

The Republican Party is in disarray and it is operating in a severe electoral environment.  I am enjoying the show as a partisan liberal and Democrat right now.  Paul Krugman is running the Abramowitz Presidential 2 party vote prediction model the results are startling:

So it ought to be a smashing Democratic victory. When I plug current numbers into the Abramowitz model (making a guess about 1st-half GDP and assuming that Bush approval in June will be about where it is today), it says 57-43 Democrats.

He asks the perpetual question of Red Sox fans and Democrats of "How can/will they screw this up" but the fundamentals are good for Democrats and horrendous for Republicans.  The Politco is running an article on how the GOP can save itself as the disorder and chaos that has been sown by their loss in MS-1 earlier this week, and the only thing that sprang to mind is that this article sounds a whole lot like some of the intra-party fights the Democrats had in the mid-80s --- all one has to do is remove party labels and change names and the article could have been written in 1982 or 1986:

We talked to some of the smartest minds in Republican politics, and their prognosis is pretty grim. They think it will take pretty big changes � and possibly many, many years � to repair a Republican brand sullied by excessive spending, an unpopular war and an even more unpopular president....

They [voters] think reckless spenders, misguided war and hypocrisy. Republicans �don�t have a vision,� says former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas). �Their behavior is being governed by a bad political model, and we�re losing races.�

The Republican infrastructure is crumbling. Making matters worse, Democrats are erecting a pretty impressive network of donors, think tanks and activist groups that is exploiting the GOP�s structural weakness.

I am not predicting 1984 will be the inverse of 2008.  However the language and the complaints are the same including the unexcerpted complaints that the other side has built a better infrastructure funded by ideological rich guys.  If 2008 is the GOP's 1986, expect the circular firing squad to continue.  Democrats were able to maintain a hold on Congressional power because they had larger reserves to squander than the Republicans ever did in their twelve years in the majority.  The GOP always operated on a thinner institutional and numerical margin.

The intra-party clash to redefine the dominant coalition partners will be brutal as creative pragmatists will be more dispersed and less able to access conventional sources of GOP supports than what AJ Strata dismissively (and correctly) calls the purity trolls and 'Amnesty Hypochondriacs.' They are more organized and familiar with conventional levers of power and can play spoiler and political hostage taker:

The poison spewed by the crowd who called President Bush �El Presidente Bustrada� and who called those who supported the comprehensive immigration bill traitors, quislings, anti-Americans (whatever, the list is endless and repulsive) sent a signal to everyone else in the party. You are with us or we stab you in the back.

Well, the good news is Americans know exactly how to deal with people like that - don�t elect them. I am not surprised to see a conservative democrat pick off the far right conservatives when a firebrand like Davis does his Malkin routine. It is poison! How many lost elections and seats will it take to get the message? I guess it depends on how wedded the zealots are to a bad cause.

So pass the popcorn as the 1980s strike back....