The two party system seems to be at one of its weaker moments. Both the democratic and republican parties are, in reality, collections of sub-groups. Democrats contain, environmentalist, union advocates, social engineers, and ardent civil rights protectors. Republicans, to hear the broad media descriptions, contain fiscally conscience free enterprise advocates, evangelical protestants, and libertarians. Broken in today’s republican movement, is the inability to hold a debate, recognize and value the input of the subgroups, and then coalesce around shared values, namely a primary process that moves from debates to galvanization—What I see is a lack of shared values.
The 2008 Democratic nomination process was closer, it appears, than the Republicans will be at achieving unity. The primary campaign featuring Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was fierce, emotional, and difficult. However, there was unity in the end. This Republican primary season has achieved contention, but looks incapable of galvanizing. Time will tell. The telling feature of the primary process to date is a lack of a middle ground coalescing. Expectantly, that’s the danger of having evangelist (of any type) as a large subgroup–They don’t negotiate as their mission is to sway or drag you to their side. I expect the evangelic members of the tea party and other republican sub-groups will need defeat at the hands of the masses. Without out right rejection by the mass of the population, the mission and vision will not get tweaked. For the Republicans, I think they are headed for a Gingrich nomination–the fiscal conservative money people will lose out to the evangelist base. The country, however, is not ready for this extreme, thus leading me to predict, a second Obama term. Can’t see what else would feel like an outright rejection. Oh, well there would be one thing, Obama beats Gingrich by a larger margin than Reagan beat Carter. That might cause a shift in energy. Of course, a Gingrich presidency would also cause a shift in energy and participation.
Either way 2012 will be a year to remember in history.
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/01/21/newt-gingrich-wins-what-it-means/
