Grendel
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2005
- Messages
- 704
- Reaction score
- 298
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
My conclusion is that the tea party is, in fact, the real heart and soul of the GOP and the conservative movement. Its knownothingism, its xenophobia and scapegoating is the real inspiration for conservative politics, and always has been. But with the demographic extinction of conservatism as a political force drawing nigh, conservatism has gone fundamentalists. That's always the case when a movement is losing and history is leaving it behind. It's why Moslem and Christian fundamentalism is on the rise -- they're losing out to modernization. Same with conservatism. The fundamentalism of the tea party will prevail against the remaining sane Republicans, and hasten the de-evolution of the GOP into a marginal, regional party.
They won't die, but they'll be weak for a couple of cycles. There are young Republicans and they'll pull the party along until it's again capable of appealing to main stream voters. Then those young conservatives will grow old, and they'll refuse to change with whatever society is doing at that time, and they'll wither until the next generation pulls it into the main stream.
The problem with the party is taht they represent the wealthy, and pretty much by definition that's a minority demographic, so they have to find a way to sell ownership class economics to working class voters; hence the endless appeals to emotion: religion, xenophobia, nationalism, and whatever other kind of elitism they can market. They're just in a pinch (again) because society is making rapid changes and that's not something that conservatives are good at . . . also almost by definition.