Although it turns out that the Chinese character for Crisis is not actually composed of the characters for danger and opportunity the inherent wisdom of this meme may explain its tenacity. I would bet that many Democrats sense both danger and opportunity in the crisis now facing GOP leadership. They are in a tight spot. Their moneyed establishment seems to feel pretty much the way the rest of us do about the Palinites and Limbaughlites of the party: they fear and despise them. However, the GOP establishment knows it can't actually win elections without the votes and volunteer energy of its "grassroots" base, composed largly of those same feared and despised loonies.
What to do?
While there are signs indicating that the GOP establishment is continuing to cowtow to its base, stories such as these also indicate the desire of the leadership to be free of its Steinbeckian fellow travelers. Some wingers are even willing to come out and say so like David Frum does here. Let's face it, there's not much difference between the socially moderate, corporatist wing of the Republican Party, and the socially moderate-to-liberal corporatist wing of the Democratic Party. The difference, I would argue, is largely the degree to which one is willing to accept big corporate donations while being associated with snake handlers and racists. Or, perhaps, whether those snake handlers make up a significant portion of the electorate in your state. Would Evan Bayh ever have been a Democrat if he came from Alabama?
Of course this is a simplification...but less so every day as moderate Republicans get weeded out more and more each election cycle. And I think it's important to look at the possibility of a GOP split favorably in terms of Democrats' electoral chances. However, I feel like there are some important aspects of this possible split to consider, which pose danger to the Democratic Party, and to the country. So let's look at the three major possible outcomes of the current kerfuffle in the GOP: The Differences are Papered Over; Sanity Returns; and The Lunatics Run the Asylum.
The Differences are Papered Over
The chance that the GOP establishment finds no alternative to the status quo seems likely, since they seem utterly out of ideas. In this scenario the leadership keeps pandering to the Limbaughlites and the Beckians and the party stays together. This is, in a sense, the safest outcome and is good for Democrats to boot. Independant voters will continue to be repulsed by the Party of No, the Party of Hate, of Fear, of Ignorance...and Democrats will continue to win elections nationally and expand control of Governorships and state houses. So why shouldn't we be happy to settle for this outcome? Because of the potential benefits of the scenario in which:
Sanity Returns
It seems to me the best possible outcome (with one caveat I'll mention below) would be if the GOP leadership grew a pair, listened to thinkers on the right like P.J. O'Rourke in this piece when he says:
And despising cracker trash who have a laundry hamper full of bedsheets with eye-holes cut in them does not make a man a liberal.
and started to look for ways to take control of the party back from the Limbaugh wing. This would almost certainly require the leadership to seek two things: defections from the DLC / New Democrat / Blue Dog wing of the Democratic Party to increase the "New GOP's" power in Congress; and a strong appeal to independant voters to make up for the lost grassroots support among religious extremists, racists, homophobes and the like. There seems to be a real play to be made here if the GOP leadership has the guts to do it. Perhaps the far right will force their hand by abandoning the GOP, but I doubt they'll do it without a big shove.
The great benefit of this scenario is that it would force the Democrats to be the party it always should have been. Rather than continuing its dalliance with corporatism, it can return to its roots as the party of the working American. No longer would we find the Ellen Tauschers and Evan Bayhs of the world watering down progressive legislation from within the comfort of our party. Democrats would be free to be Democrats, corporatist Democrats would be free to be the Republicans they always secretly wanted to be and the political landscape of the entire country would shift to the left.
The risk should this come to pass, however, is a politically isolated extremist right. It's impossible to say exactly how paranoid, narcissistic, self-pitying, and propagandistic the rhetoric being spewed by the likes of Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck and friends would be once they no longer had any influence in Congress and no shot at the White House. My instincts tell me, "very," and that their audience would be even more receptive than today. I may be overblowing the danger of such a scenario...but whenever I watch even five seconds of Glenn Beck I'm convinced otherwise.
The Lunatics Run the Asylum
But this is a risk worth taking because the worst possible outcome, in my view, would be if the Limbaugh wing fully takes over the GOP...perhaps if this effort succeeds. If the far right can actually replace the GOP establishment with its own, then what remains of the GOP's corporatist wing will have only one way to go to avoid political irrelevance...the Democratic Party. This is already threatening to happen with the possible defection of Arlen Specter. Will we see more socially moderate members of Congress look to switch parties? What would this mean for the Democrats?
The risk here is that the Democratic party's corporatist wing comes back with a vengeance. Corporate money comes flooding into the right wing of the party and stems the progressive tide of the last six years. Politics in the US shifts back to where it was in 2002...with the choice being right or over-the-cliff right. This is the outcome to be avoided at all cost.
Conclusion
I'm no tactitian, but I think one course of action we can take as Democrats is to make it clear that turncoat Republicans are NOT welcome in our house. Encourage the likes of Arlen Specter to turn Independant, but don't invite them into our party. Make it clear that they need to get their own house in orer, not come befoul ours.
Similarly, we should just keep doing like we're doing and make life very uncomfortable for the Bayhs and Tauschers of the party. Their coporatist ideology truly clashes with core Democratic principles and we should never let them forget it.