To take this a step further - what is the actual goal of the Republicans?  We always look at taking this or that office back.  What are we going to to do once we get it.  We invariably are like the dog who finally caught the car.  What do I do now?  The Right has been horrific at messaging for as long as I can remember - although it is hard to win the hearts and minds of people when you deal in facts, and not emotion - as the left does.

We don't lay out for people what the consequences are when more freedom and liberty is stripped from us.  We don't explain well what the consequences are of more and more people on welfare.  We frame it in dollars and cents (sense) and figure everyone will agree with us.

We don't have the media or the various interest groups on our side.  Probably never will.  We don't have the infrastructure in place that the left has been working on for 70-80 years.  We are working on it but we have a lot of catching up to do.

This article certainly gets one thing right: one of the two political parties is dying, and will soon either be irrelevant or transformed. The thing it gets wrong is precisely which party.

After all, no party can continue to push forth an agenda that the vast majority of the people disagree with indefinitely. The vast majority of the people (including a majority of those in the Republican party) want no Medicare cuts, no Social Security cuts, and an increase in taxes on the rich. Of course, the Republican party takes exactly the opposite position.

This works when people aren't really paying attention. In fact, the only reason the Republican party is a relevant political force in America is because most people really have no idea how diametically opposed their positions are from those of the modern Republican party.

This game continues to work as long as the Republican party doesn't actually make good on its commitments. (See spending under the Reagan era, under the GHWB era, under the GWB era, the Medicare expansion, the failure of SS privatization, etc.) In other words, the only reason the party continues to exist is because it fails at doing what it claims to want to do.

Some people think that all of the above failures are merely times where the party lost their moorings. Surely, now Republicans have gotten the message, and will stay true to their principles. But if this were the case, why would the Republican party be about to completely capitulate to Obama on the debt ceiling? Why are they about to give him a completely clean bill, or a bill with small non-controversial spending cuts? Why was this outcome so obvious that I predicted it weeks ago, many times on NR's comment section (being laughed at by other commenters the entire time)?

The answer is simple. If Republicans didn't completely capitulate (as in 1995), they couldn't hide their agenda anymore. The American people would have been forced into an America without Social Security/Medicare and other spending. Such an event would have marginalized the Republican party for a generation. That is why the Republican party caves -- not because they momentarily lose their principles (every year for decades), but rather because sticking to their principles would cause the immediate death of the party as a relevant political force.

This is ultimately why the Republican party will fail in the end. It's entire raison d'etre is to benefit the few at the expense of the great many. While they fail repeatedly on spending and benefit cuts (as they must to survive), they have succeeded in starving the government of revenue (forcing large deficits). The Republicans are completely fine in a world where the income of the top tenth of a percent climbs six-fold, while the median wage declines. But this shell game can only go on for so long. Eventually, taxes will either have to be raised on the wealthy to levels that would make Republicans positively shudder, or they will have to end Medicare and/or SS. They will no longer have the option of hiding the consequences of the policies they want from the American people, and the American people will experience the Republican vision in full force.

Either the Republicans will capitulate to the Democrats just as they are about to now, or they will stand by their principles and die as a major political force. Either way, the facade that is the modern Republican party will crumble. It is just a matter of time.

I never said the Republican party was currently dead. To summarize, let's split this into three things: spending, taxes, and the party itself as an electoral entity.

The Republican spending vision of "less government" (i.e. radical restructuring or elimination of popular entitlement programs) is what is dead. This has been reaffirmed through decade after decade of the programs' maintenance and expansion under Republican governance.

The Republican tax vision of "starve the beast" is alive, but on life support. After thrity years tricke-down, the median wage is declining while the income of the top tenth of a percent has increased several times over. This is an unstable equilibrium on its own, but when combined with an eventual debt crisis that is the inevitable consequence of this policy, its days are numbered.

The Republican party as an electoral entity will continue to exist so long as they continue to fail on spending, and so long as the debt crisis is years away. As soon as either changes, that is when the party will either be transformed or replaced. I never said that we would have a one-party state. We will always have two parties, and voters will always go from one to the other when they are not satisfied (as in 2010). The only question is what the parties will look like.

Lots of assumptions, most of which I would guess you are too trapped in your paradigm to see.

You're an excellent refutation of the post: The Democrat Party will continue to exist because envy is stronger than reason.

So, you speak for "most Americans," and Warren Buffet speaks for the wealthy?

Me, I only speak for myself. I guess I'm outnumbered.

When you say Europe, do you mean Germany, which has a MUCH bigger welfare state than the US, and is currently doing just fine?

"the debt and deficit problems we're experiencing are clearly the result of liberal policies, not conservative policies"

What would our medium term deficit be if the Bush tax cuts were never enacted? What would our long term deficit be if we actually had a non-insane healthcare system, like every other modern industrialized nation? (Doesn't have to be single payer -- could be privatized yet regulated everything like in Switzerland, or health savings accounts/catestrophic insurance/regulation like in Singapore.)

When you have the answers to those two questions, then you can start talking about whether the deficit is a liberal or conservative problem.

I actually agree with you to a point (I disagree with you philosophically, but not pragmatically).

Let's say, hypothetically, that there were two parties with real, significant different philosophies towards government. Say one wanted a government of a certain size (i.e. democrats), and the other wanted a government half that (what we as Republicans profess to believe). If that were the case, would the political debates look anything like what they look like? In bare terms, the compromise between the two parties would be 75% of what the first party('democrats') want. Is that the debate going on right now? Has it ever been? Has the government shrank by 25% when Republicans had power, then rebounded when Democrats regained it?

Obviously that's not what happens. Instead, government continues to grow. It grew when the Democrats were in power, and it grew when the Republicans were in power. The size and scope of our government hasn't swung back and forth between the Democratic ideal and the (supposed) Republican ideal. It has just grown and grown. In spite of the fact that Republican presidents have been in power more than Democratic presidents, in spite of the fact that control of the legislature has swung back and forth since 1995. In spite of the fact that more Americans self identify as 'conservative,' and have done so since time immemorial.

If you are at least 45 years old: if you have been an adult for 20 years: can you look back at the last 20 years and really say that 'conservatives' have really won anything? That any aspect of our country and culture comes closer to the 'conservative' ideal than it was when you were in college?

The only thing I can think of (and this is iffy) is 2nd amendment (gun) rights.
And home schooling. We've won the right to drop out of society. Hardly a long term strategy for success.

SG

"-what is the actual goal of the Republicans?" Good question. Based on the last 12- or 18-month's behavior, I'd say it is to have a government 93%, or 98%, of the size that the Democrats want.

In other words, it doesn't have one. It gave up the fight. The Republicans gave up the culture war in order to focus on the budget. Its focus on the budget leads to insignificant differences with the Democratic Party.

So what's a good Republican to do? That's simple. Be moderately wealthy. Wealthy enough to live in gated communities, wealthy enough to send kids to private schools, wealthy enough to afford the good doctors and not the coming publicly owned doctors. The culture is gone. Every institution that matters to our collective lives (schools, universities, the law, government bureaucracies, and soon the medical establishment) is gone. So just be wealthy enough to avoid them.

I'm skeptical of the 'end of the Democratic Party' meme, given that the Democratic Party always wins.

Sk

As long as there are Democrats like Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Dickie Durbin with their greasy little hands on the levers of power, the entire country has something to worry about.