In fact, the Republicans have been much better at unifying their factions. Reagan was truly the master, and Nixon did a pretty damned good job until he got caught.
That's pretty much Obama's strength now. Clinton had a unifying power, but it was more unifying the right and left edges of the two parties - he's the reason Dems still say "bipartisan" like it's a good thing.
Bush did a great job of appealing to all the factions within the party
In speech. Not always in action.
The primaries actually showed a stark breakdown along ideological lines -- you had one candidate for the war hawks (McCain), another for the fundamentalists (Huckabee), and two for the Libertarians (Romney for the moderates, Paul for the orthodoxy). Where Nixon, Reagan, and Bush managed to appeal to all these different groups, this year's field split them sharply.
To the point where you have the hilarious situation of the guy they picked trying to argue that he constantly disagrees with his people but is lockstep with the leader that they hate, as some sort of failed compromise.
A question I have is, would McCain be doing as badly right now if he had picked Huckabee?
Hard to imagine; that woman's novelty has worn off earlier than they had hoped and she is now hanging from McCain's neck like some sort of noisy albatross, dragging him down with her. The problem is she's too damned important; at this point we shouldn't even be considering the VPs' effects on the polls. Had he picked Huckabee, we wouldn't even be mentioning him except as a sidenote. Not to say it wouldn't have a real effect, but he wouldn't be part of the normal dialogue the same way Joe Biden isn't, despite being a pretty smart and entertaining guy himself.
The only explanation I can think of for why McCain picked Palin over Huckabee is his absurd belief that she was going to peel away Clinton supporters. This was possibly the most boneheaded idea out of the many, many boneheaded ideas that led to her selection.
Possible; the theory I tend to agree with is that he was trying to counteract Obama's whole "Change" theme (which, yeah, is playing the race card in one aspect) with a sort of "We Can Do That Too." Backfired spectacularly, of course, since the exact female he brought in was only trying to bring the status quo to its extreme.
The question I want to ask is "Why choose an unqualified nobody when there are several other well known Republican women out there?" The presumptive answer is "They just went down the list until they found one too stupid to say 'no'."
I don't think things can go back to the way they were. The evangelicals are sick of being taken for granted by a moderate party; they were pissed at Bush for spending '04 pandering to them and then '05-present ignoring them (Alito's appointment notwithstanding) and not at all happy about McCain's nomination.
The evangelicals are a shrinking demographic though. Yeah, they're imposingly big and loud today because they've been given a booster shot, but they're slowly becoming more irrelevant as America inches slowly left like it has been for four centuries.
The "scared shitless" demographic, though, has been a relatively stable power, constantly fluxing but never quite going away or losing its grip on the country. Bush's power derived almost solely from this source, and in a twisted sort of way, so does Obama's... pandering to those who are scared shitless of Bush.
The successful, "War Hawk" Republicans have always been the ones to control this sentiment. Bush did it masterfully, despite being utterly incapable of everything else. His father actually failed on his inability to control it, despite his best efforts (a man who, in retrospect, is best known from puking as a defensive measure, is not one to intimidate much of anything.) Reagan was the cowboy, ready to shoot all the durn criminals that were out there. Even Nixon got cut a lot of slack because he did actually put a stop to the country's current nightmare.
And now the party has, rightfully, chosen the take-charge war hero to represent them. Had the situation not been what it is, it probably would have worked out beautifully. As it is, the men who had come before McCain have probably laid the terror on a little bit thick; the country's just accepted the state of affairs with grim apathy, the way you'd expect people to react in a hell-bound handbasket such as the one the GOP says we're in (and has deliberately put us in).
The problem is this: the Republican Party needs the evangelical vote to win elections...but at this point, seeking that vote has most likely helped COST them this election. And after picking Palin, I don't think there's any going back; I don't think the evangelicals are going to support any moderate Republican nominee from here on in.
Say the other guy is a Muslim Terrorist enough times, and they'll grudgingly side with whatever alternative they have. The evangelicals are easy to scare and easy to manipulate... I mean, hell, that's what turned them into evangelicals.
I think this puts Romney in a pretty good position for '12 -- the Republicans are going to want somebody to blame for their defeat, and Romney can say "If you had picked ME, I could have won."
Sure, but who in the GOP can't make the same claim? Besides Dick Cheney.
And anybody who ever had any association with Dick Cheney.
only changed his mind when he decided to run for national office.
This part doesn't seem to be much of a problem with them.
Then again, I'd lay even greater odds the Republican nominee will be someone we're not even thinking of right now. Remember a couple years back when we figured it would be Frist?
Had you mentioned McCain in '04, one could imagine him being the nominee. Of course, you'd have been thinking of 2004 John McCain and not 2008 Bizarro McCain, but the point stands.
Which brings me back to the main point here: popular Republicans fucking destroy their careers when they pander to the insane fringe of the party.
Unpopular Reublicans, however, enjoy great success.
Whether you're right or wrong, always stick to your principles. Even Hitler would seem a little better had he really believed in the shit he was doing.
