The political landscape

[unixronin]

I've come across a variety of articles across the Web talking about how the Republican Party is melting down as moderate Republicans, feeling marginalized by their own party, are abandoning it to run as independents.  (Here's an example from the Boston Globe.)

My intent here is not to argue about whether or not the Republican Party is in fact falling apart.  Rather, I have a larger question:  Assume for the moment that the speculation is true.  If the Republican Party falls apart, what happens to the Democratic Party?

The way I see it, there's a variety of ways it could go.  If enough moderate Republicans cross over to the Democratic side of the aisle, we could end up with a de-facto one-party system, with a Congress all but completely controlled by the Democratic Party and no other faction powerful enough to seriously challenge it at the Federal level.  Or, one or more of the third parties could pick up enough support to challenge the Democratic Party.  The Democratic Party itself could move back towards the center, influenced by former moderate Republicans and no longer needing to cater to its more radical left-wingers; or, no longer needing support from the center to defeat the Republican Party, it could move further left.  Or, it could even melt down itself, lacking the Republican party to balance it.

[Note:  I don't claim this is an exhaustive list, or that any of them is a sure thing.  I'm not predicting, I'm speculating.]

So, what do all you zombies think?

Comments

[guppiecat]

The the entire length of my political memory, the Democrats have defined themselves by strict opposition to the Republicans. If the Republicans suddenly fall apart, I think the Democrats will too.

If this were to happen (which I don't think will occur, but it's an interesting exercise), I predict the following:

1) The term "Republican" sticks around, but it becomes a marginalized party focusing on conservative Christian issues, with no rhetoric involving taxes.

2) The Libertarian party will lose their rhetoric of "fairness" and "tolerance" and focus strictly on the financial issues of building a realistic taxation system. They will absorb the non-fundamentalist Republicans and lose their more fringey members.

3) The Democratic party will focus primarily on social issues. They will lose about 1/3 of their membership when they start discussing labor issues and socialized medicine.

4) The Green party will rise in prominence and absorb the environmentalists from the Democratic party.

5) The Socialist and Communist parties will see this as their chance to take power, and they will be sadly mistaken. The other four primary parties will unite and utterly crush these two parties, after which they will continue to discuss their own issues and completely fail to understand why their three opposing parties will not engage in dialogue with them.

6) Another party will eventually form, called "Isolationist" for lack of a better term. Their focus will be the fact that America is no longer the one global superpower. They will focus on local issues, and absorb the disenfranchised social Libertarians. They will continue to be a minor party, but will add important discussions to the political framework.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

An interesting scenario. At least the first three to four of those points sound pretty plausible to me.

[mzmadmike.livejournal.com]

That sounds rather plausible. You don't mention the interim, where, drunk with power, the Dems give the commies and soshies 90% of their platform anyway, the economy collapses and we revisit the Dark Ages.

The question is, will the reorganization happen fast enough to stop the above before it's too late?

Though I doubt the Libertarians will ever amount to anything. They've had almost 40 years and gotten pretty much nowhere.