The only "revolt" by the Republican base against their leaders was simply that the base thinks the leadership isn't extreme enough. The Tea Party was never genuinely libertarian...their views simply echoed that of the party leadership whether it was on social issues, the budget, and it'll be true of defense as well.
None of the Tea Party positions are very coherent, unless you've found some ways to reconcile the anti-government spending campaign with their insistence that you leave their Medicare and Social Security alone. But what they do tend to highlight is the most radical, visceral, and resentment-fueled elements in any policy. I'd expect this to manifest in neo-con hawkishness.
I think there are probably even more people who think Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a great President. It's terrifying.
I can safely say the GOP has alienated me for the foreseeable future based on their asinine foreign policy alone. But you add in some of the anti-science and gay remarks and I think they have to come a long way to earn my vote again. They haven't had it in prez vote since Dole in 96 but still.
Would these be people who bought into the Independence Day canon that Schwarzennegger would be President in 2016 due to an Amendment to the Constitution?
You know you've woken up to bizarro world when Michelle Malkin condemns Ann Coulter for something she said.
He never stood a chance, and I wouldn't have voted for him in the general, but goddammit, we could've had great excuses to link this
He's a moderate 'cause he believes evolution is a fact and the massive amounts of greenhouse gasses that humans produce are causing the planet to get warmer. Never mind that most of his other views are in line with the rest of his party.
This is my hope for the future of the Republican Party: To blazes with partisanship. Work alongside whoever, regardless of politics.
Haha, I guess I wasn't the only one to think of that. But yeah, Huntsman doesn't have much of a future in the GOP. As an independent, maybe.
If they don't follow David Frum's example, they're on their way to extinction. The major ongoing demographic shifts all work against them.
They will, I just wonder who is out there is going to spearhead the movement of expunging the most unpalatable parts of their message.
I think that they'll have to see real, lasting losses in Congress (maybe also in state governments) for them to think about really changing. Just being shut out of the Presidency isn't going to convince them.
People, like me, who used to vote for moderate/socially left - leaning Republicans, acutally need moderate GOP candidates to vote for. Until then, people like me will likely declare themselves independent and vote for the party that's not lead by the bat crazies and doesn't want to look up my skirt to regulate my reproductive rights.
They're going to do exactly what they did after the 2008 election, decide that they need to move FURTHER right because the candidate was too moderate and that's why they lost. To me, that makes them not so much of a nonissue as a dangerous wild card. They'd also used same-sex marriage as a thing to help propel people to the polls, so I'm also wondering how, if they're running out of states to do that trick in, they'll get people emotionally invested enough to vote even if the candidates are a bit scattered. What they do need is a more moderate influence, and offhand, I get the feeling that that is where they lost ground, although I've not yet gone through and checked that. The extreme candidates like Akin didn't win.... but that wasn't a loss of territory. If they keep this up, they may be putting them into a spot where they are stuck at almost taking control of the government, but never able to, until something happens that fractures the Democratic Party sufficiently that the Republican Party gets a new influx, or possibly, if the LIbertarian Party gets a few percent bigger, and the Republicans reposition themselves to try to absorb Libertarian voters if they find that they're always a few % down, and the LIbertarian Party is representing 10% of the vote (it was a surprisingly decent chunk in a few states where it was in the mid-digits) Alternative long shot: Somehow work to capitalize the Puerto Rico statehood issue. The governor is Luis Fortuno, who is a member of the Republican National Committee. It's another one of those avenues that can break them out of the demographic mold in the continental 48 without it coming off as pandering. (The other option being trying to tap into the already fairly Republican Cuban population in Florida in a more effective fashion). It's a fairly cheap bit of identity politics, but would shake off stereotypes.
