The Impending End of the GOP

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

Well there, I’ve said it publicly!  I think the GOP will come to an end as a presidential party for sure, a U.S. senatorial party maybe, within a decade.  Before you start complaining, the reason I make this “prediction” is that they just can’t help themselves.  The GOP wants to be a minority party.  They are doing everything they can to achieve this aim.  Think about it!

According to all the political chisme out there it appears that the two GOP front runners for the 2016 presidential nomination (can you believe we are talking about that already) are Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.  Can you imagine?  Paul for all intents and purposes is a libertarian and cannot find a good reason for the government to get involved in anything, setting him apart from the military and diplomatic interventionists that make up the mainstream of the Republican Party.  Members of his own party have called the other potential candidate a “wacko.”  In a past column, I pointed out that Senator Cruz acts and sounds like the late, infamous Senator Joe McCarthy when he insinuates such crazy notions as that of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel taking monetary gifts from North Korea.  Although let me say that Ted’s candidacy may be in doubt given that he may be Canadian by birth anyway.  I think Donald Trump needs to unleash his “birther army” on Canada and get some real research on this issue.  We certainly don’t want any foreigners becoming President of the United States.

A major issue with both Rand and Ted is obviously their electability.  Where Rand lacks credibility outside Tea Party circles, Ted lacks charm.  Both candidates are celebrities within the Tea Party and among the groups populating the right wing of the GOP.  Although the right wing represents a significant percentage of all voters who participate in Republican primaries, they are, by themselves, not strong enough to win their party’s presidential nomination.  The overall GOP nomination process is tightly controlled by the mainstream of the party leaving the Tea Partiers in a position where they simply end up being a very vocal and well-organized large numerical minority within their party.

The ideological split within the Republican Party has been forthcoming since the 1980s when the unlikely coalition that brought us the Reagan and subsequent regimes was formed.  Interviews with many folks who attend GOP conventions during the years when the presidential nomination is sought have revealed the strange gatherings that take place in different venues serving the convention, for example prayer meetings on  some hotel floors, “whiskey drinking and cigar smoking” on others.  Eventually, as the differences between these disparate groups became evident a split began to form.  And the extremists felt that they could begin putting forth their own presidential candidates, thus the arrival of Ted and Rand.  The rise of extremist candidates such as Rand and Ted is a “red light” for party elders.

The mainstream of the GOP has been able to hold off the extremists for several decades but it is getting more and more difficult given how Rand and Ted have openly challenged the traditional party leadership.  Mainstream candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney were forced to appease the extremists just to gain the nomination.  I just don’t know how long this can continue.

Extremists are at the forefront of the other problem the GOP faces as well, and that is, the position that party politicians continue taking in areas such as immigration reform and gun control, issues that do not resonate with the general population.  The failure of background checks on the gun control was even found abhorring by many GOP mainstreamers.  Extremists, led by the NRA even went so low as engineering the defeat of background checks in the face of the mourning Newtown families who were openly lobbying the Senate.  You can bet that President Obama and other Democratic Party leaders are going to use this in the forthcoming mid-term elections.

Immigration reform is also on its deathbed and it will cost Republicans the Latino vote for sure.  This may be the last straw for Latinos who were on the fence ideologically, as it will solidify their presidential votes for the Democratic Party in future elections.

So, if I were part of the GOP mainstream and leadership I would seriously be thinking of switching parties, forming a new party or simply retiring from politics, because the Grand Old Party looks like it is on life support with no hope for revival.