Posted on 10/26/2008 6:28:19 PM PDT by SoftwareEngineer
The Presidential Election of 2008 will mark the end of the Eastern wing of the Republican Party. The Eastern wing of the Republican Party has dominated the party since the founding of the GOP in the mid 1800s. However, since the 1960s the power base of the Republican Party has shifted West and South. This has left an increasingly orphaned Eastern wing of the Republican Party. They have had a mild resurgence in the mid 1990s when a swathe of North Eastern states including (incredibly!) Massachusetts fell under Republican Governorships. However in the last 8 years, state after state in the North East has turned Democratic and is unlikely to return to the Republican column soon.
The final fall of the Eastern wing is evident in the Republican Establishment pundits that are increasingly abandoning the party. From Peggy Noonan to David Broder to David Frum to others, these Eastern wing followers are abandoning their party. No matter what excuses are trotted out, the fact remains that these pundits and many others in the Beltway crowd have effectively shifted their allegiance to the Democratic Party and are no longer Republicans in either name or actions.
When the 2008 election is done and McCain has won (and yes, he WILL win and with over 300 EVs) the power structure of the Republican Party will be based solely in the South, the mid-West and the West. Any pretense of having the North East as part of the Republican base will be done for once and for all.
So, what does this mean for the Republican Party? Is this good? On the one hand, with a majority of the population in the South and the West, Republican majorities can be assured for years to come solely on our strength in those reasons. On the other hand, abandoning an entire region of the country is problematic both from a practical point of view and from a national point of view. After all, a party that does not represent an entire region of the United States is in many ways not a national party.
So, what happened in the North East? Why did a bunch of states that had historically voted Republican since the Civil War turn Republican? This is a vexing question especially in those North Eastern states still dominated by Caucasians. The usual excuse of minority block voting for Democrats does not work. Why does Vermont with a 95%+ White population vote Democratic? For that matter why do Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland?
There are multiple answers to this question. They include increasing urbanization, loss of active religious participation, influence from Europe, resentment at the shift of the power base to the South and the West, Media influence as well as an increasingly bleak economic picture as jobs shift to the low tax states of the South. In many ways the North East of this country is becoming like Northern Europe. It is affluent but aging and is increasingly turning to socialism to protect its affluence. As any number of countries in Europe have shown, this will only work for a decade or two. By the end of that time frame the house of cards collapses on itself and socialism can no longer support itself. A prime example of this can be found in our Northern neighbor, Canada that is now experiencing a Conservative resurgence after nearly 3 decades of non stop and unrepentant socialism.
Thus the good news for the Republicans is that the North East will experience its own version of rebirth of the conservative movement in about 20 years. A newer generation of leaders will emerge and will take those states from the grassroots. That much is certain.
What is also certain is that when the North East re-joins the Republican Party, it will do so a junior member of the conservative movement and will not have any influence in national politics for decades to come. The era of North East dominance of the Republican Party is well and truly over after 150 years.
Many solid republicans left the NE when more liberal leaders were voted in. It became a self perpetuating cycle. We all live down south now :)
With yankee rinos like Jim Jeffords, Michael Bloomberg and Lincoln Chaffee, they will not be missed.
I don't know about that, but I do know that it is way past time for a different method of scheduling state primaries. I think random computer selection would be great.
Maybe. If McCain wins. If not, all bets are off.
Not a day goes by when I don’t thank my now deceased parents for moving us from Massachusetts to Arizona when I was a kid.
The NE types were fairly smug with the McCain nomination, but he went all Maverick-y on them with Palin, who scares the crap out of them. They thought they’d taken the party back, and are now aghast.
I for one do miss living in Mass, for the scenery and history (the politics, not so much). I hope this comes to pass, as I would like to be able to live there again, but I refuse so long as the 2nd Amendment is so vilified and deprecated there, and so long as the political climate is so anti-business, pro-welfare, deleterious to real estate costs and cost of living, and intolerant.
I don’t think it will swing as far Republican as some areas might, simply because the massive Boston-NY-Washington corridor will stay liberal for a long time, and New England is an extended suburban of the megalopolis.
Good stuff! One point I’d like to make: as I have posted several times - if Mitt Romney was running as the fomer governor of, say Michigan or Utah, he would have fared much, much better.
Conservative and Republican are not the same thing!
There are liberal Republicans, opportunist Republicans who follow wherever the political wind blows, and conservative Republicans. There are also conservatives who are not Republican.
Otherwise, you would end up with folks like Chafee (before he left) and Snowe equated to folks like DeMint and Sanford.
Rep. Scott Garrett, 5th district, NJ is an EXCELLENT conservative northeastern GOPer. Forget the ‘pundits’. They are media whores. Concentrate on actual elected politicians.
Fight fire with fire.
Good essay.
I think this is key - “loss of active religious participation”. A state by state comparison of charitable giving as a % of income reveals that citizens of New England and liberal mid-Atlantic states states are parsimonious compared to those in the south. Government largesse is a substitute for religious charity in their world view.
Romney ping.
You are correct. Republican and conservative are not the same thing and I do take care in separating the two.
However, I use them interchangeably in the one sense that the ONLY nationally viable political party representing us today is Republicans. Thus what happens to the Republican Party impacts us conservatives immeasurably.
he represents a lot of people who work in wall street and voted against the bailout.
Does your map reflect the 1976 election?
Once the babyboomers retire, there will be no one left to twist propagandist liberal lies... for the young conservatives will take over out of sheer frustration and a bitterness we have tasted our entire lives.
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