It's interesting to pull the lens back and see what's happening to the GOP and how quickly it is occurring. On election night, I was struck by how even the most (Car)vile of political commentators noted the Republicans are diving deeper and deeper into Dixie as their last redoubt. And even there, the Dems are establishing more potent bases in the major cities, where Austin and Atlanta come to mind in particular. But it wasn't until I read what's below the fold that I realized how rickety things are becoming for the
Gulf-states Only Party Grand Old Party.
Check it out, in
The Blue-ing of the Burbs posted by Alan Ehrenhalt at Governing.com (and if you're not reading that publication online or in hardcopy shame on you!).
Ehrenhalt says of George Allen's Senate loss that:
He had to concede too many suburban votes to make up his deficit in the rural counties where he was popular.
Republicans conceding suburban votes?! Rural deficits?! Mon dieu! How can this be?! Simple, according to Ehrenhalt:
There was a time, not too many years ago, when my home county of Arlington, the inner-suburban territory just across the Potomac from Washington D.C., used to support Republicans running for statewide office. Then Arlington turned Democratic, but the Republicans didn't worry too much, because adjoining Fairfax, with five times as many people, was safely in the GOP column.
In the past decade, Democrats began carrying Fairfax. Still, Republicans had a cushion: They dominated Loudoun and Prince William, the fast-growing outer suburban counties just beyond the Fairfax line.
Now that cushion is just about gone as well.
Both Loudoun and Prince William voted for Tim Kaine in his successful Democratic campaign for governor last year; both voted for Democrat Jim Webb last week against Republican Senator George Allen.
Conceding that the Virginia suburbs would likely vote GOP in presidential elections for some time at least, the author adds this ominous (for Republicans) note:
I don't think Virginia is a special case. The vote in its suburbs essentially tracks what has been happening in much of suburban America in the last two elections. If Republicans have to go 50 miles beyond the cities to find friendly territory, they are going to lose elections in a lot of states in the next few years. If they're smart, they'll take a good look at the numbers from Virginia on Nov. 7 -- and begin thinking about strategies that might turn them around.
"Strategies that might turn them around"?? Like what, becoming Democrats? Because if you take deficit bloating, women hating, race baiting, law and order ignoring, war mongering, super-wealthy enabling, christofascist favoring policies away from the GOP crazies out there today and maybe add some competence and compassion, you kinda get this guy, don't you? The "money quote" though is right here:
Republicans are having to go further and further out from the cities to find electoral territory that is safely theirs. At some point, they run out of room.
Wow. Read it again: "At some point, they run out of room." Just think about the November 07 map for a moment. House Republicans in New England are down to one. We've read that Dean's strategy killed the Delaware GOP. New York Republicans are in full retreat, state and federal. The Dem successes in state houses and governorships are being under-reported and under-appreciated for the "federal feeder system" they will become. Lynn Swan "took one for the team" being whupped in Pennsylvania by Gov. Ed Rendell. Kansas is going as blue as a Michigan Wolverine's jersey. ID-01 was ours for the taking. We came closer than anyone could imagine in Nebraska. And in 2004, the Illinois GOP settled on Maryland nut job import Alan Keyes (!) who was stunningly drubbed by now Senator Barack Obama upstate and downstate, urban and suburban, peas and carrots.
Time for an inventory: Few sane, self-respecting African Americans will have any truck with Republicans, especially after Corker's "call me" ad. Senslessbrenner killed GOP chances with Hispanics. Gay-bashing (verbal and physical) is a Republican Olympic event. Women are weighing in for Democrats. Northern Republicans are going the way of the Quagga. That's not a big tent. It's barely a hankie.
And as the suburbs start to be less reliably Republican, the GOP head deeper and deeper south, into the countryside and up into the mountains. Oh, it's a GOP movement all right. So is chaotic retreat.
Next installment: Add "non union" party to the list--a TSA unionization revitalization.