My intuition is that it is possibly short-sighted to assume (if anyone does) that the trajectory of the GOP is into decline in the long term.
Here's one of the ways I have been thinking about this:
As I wrote in an earlier diary about President Obama's "story of us" (see Marshall Ganz's online essay for where I get this phrase, and remember Ganz was very involved in Obama's campaign):
a major part of President Obama's story has a very clear role/part for those who are defined in the story as divisive, petty and ideologically-driven, rather than expansive, inclusive and practical.
There seem to be two pieces to this aspect of this particular role in the script. As petty divisive ideologically-driven characters, the part is an increasingly marginal one. But, the door is open for them to enter the non-divisive "us" and be part of it. But only if they stop being so petty, ideological and divisive.
I've been thinking lately that one of the potential weaknesses in this construction of "us" is that its breadth may weaken the feeling of specialness that is so important to the culturally constructed self. The Obama story seeks to offer its own version of specialness in how it defines America and Americans as intrinsically good. And so far, that appears to work pretty well. But in its broadness, this "us" lacks a certain kind of specialness that seems to me to be tailor-made for the Republicans to use.
If the Republican Party decided to turn this story on its head, they could potentially exploit the relative shallowness of specialness that comes in Obama's story. One way the cultural self can feel special is by seeing itself as part of a small embattled elect who understand and see better than the masses. It is the very smallness and relative unpopularity of the group that gives its members their sense of being special. Think about the fundamentalist Christian tendency to implicitly invoke the time when Christians were oppressed by imperial Rome.
In practice, this would mean the Republican Party setting the goal of depth of commitment -- keeping its strongest base inspired, alive and passionate -- and letting go of the goal of expanding its popularity for the short term.
I see the function of such a move from a perspective that may not make sense on this site or more broadly. My perspective is to see this nation as a collective -- one entity.
One implication of this perspective is that I see the hard-core right-wing Christian dominionist overt white supremacist etc etc type of energy as true and real part of the core of this nation.
It seems to me that this way of seeing the nation is widely rejected in contexts like daily kos and other liberal/progressive contexts like it, online or off. Unwilling to perceive this ugly energy as part of their own collective self that is deeply connected and intertwined, progressives and liberals in these contexts tend to see it as different from themselves, and something they stand opposed to.
In fact, this is one of the collective functions of the hard-core right-wing energy -- it gives cover to the less overt kinds of ugly. By comparison, white liberal and progressive versions of the cultural ugliness can appear almost benign in comparison. But that is not its only function, just one example of it.
So anyway, as I see it, this energy itself is a core part of the entity, the collective. It needs agents and containers that will keep it alive because without it, the collective loses something crucial of what makes it what it is. In my perspective, this energy will exist and be protected and sustained, as long as this nation exists as a nation.
I suspect that the Republican Party is already one of the potential containers for this energy. Consider the rallies for Sarah Palin during the campaign. There was a lot of energy there. No, she didn't appeal to a broad range of constituencies in the country at this time. But oh boy did she appeal very strongly to a narrow base.
If the Republican Party decided to focus on keeping a small slice of this nation's people energized, inspired and extremely passionate, it would function as a carrier and container for this energy that Obama has defined as outside of the "us" of America. The GOP would then be poised to use this energy if and when circumstances change in the larger collective.
One possible context for such a change would be widespread physical instability beyond the capacity of any government to control or stop.
Serious changes in the climate could create such a context.
There may be other moments of opportunity as well.
Of course, right now the Republicans are publicly acting like fools. Two examples of this are Bobby Jindal's now-infamous rebuttal and Michael Steele's "off the hook" ... um... thing.
It may not functionally be a mistake for the GOP that the most public faces of the foolishness are men of color. The failed efforts of these two figures could feed back into a justification for the GOP to return un-apologetically to its strongest base with the rationale that it tried to be more inclusive but it just didn't work out.
A diary on the rec list right now is called The GOP and the Growing Right-Wing Terror Threat
Apart from the frame of "terror threat" this diary contains information about the narrow base I am thinking about, and suggests the level of energy and passion flows in that arena. In its concluding paragraph, the diary says:
Increasingly, the conservative movement seems to find its strongest support at the dark nexus inhabited by gun rights advocates, religious zealots, white supremacists, anti-immigrant xenophobes, pro-life activists and anti-government crusaders.
This nexus is small but it is deep. While the current context may narratively marginalize this part of the larger collective, it is part and parcel of what this nation is.
If the GOP deliberately chooses to nurture and sustain this energy as a long-term strategy, its actions will have different goals than what others might expect.
For example, it might use the 2012 elections not as a vehicle to take the White House (or Congress) in that year, burt rather as a process by which it would further energize, empassion and invigorate its narrow base. With this approach, losing the election would be a positive for the longer-term goal since it would increase this narrow base's sense of embattled specialness.
I think that even the current oppositional approach from the GOP also would feed into this longer-term strategy. It may appear foolish in the short term (and it does -- see this other currently rec'd diary: People are ANGRY and the GOP is Out of Power, Out of Touch, and Running out of Time)
But in relation to a different goal than short-term power, these actions that appear so wrongheaded right now may actually be succeeding in ways that are not yet visible.
Update, sort of: in the time it took me to write this diary and post it, a new front page story was posted that relates to its content. Scout Finch's Joe the Plumber......Circling the Drain highlights this individual's militia-like rhetoric and asks: When will conservatives realize this guy is straight out of wingnut militia central casting and flush him for good?
Using the lens I have tried to lay out here, that is quite possibly the wrong question to ask at this point. The correct question would be something like What function is "Joe the Plumber" playing in relation to what possible goals of the GOP?