The outcome of the Republican primaries so far portends disaster for the party in the fall election. Among the leading candidates, two are largely unacceptable to the majority of republican voters (Huckabee and Romney); a third has no vision beyond what happened between 8:48 am and 11:59 pm on 9/11/01; a fourth does his best politicking on reruns of Law & Order, and a fifth is anathema to the Tancredo-Dobbs-Minutemen set because of his support for "immigration reform."
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A speculative view: the 1960s (the Vietnam war and Civil Rights activism) shattered the Democrats' "New Deal Coalition." The Republican party benefited from the flight of southern whites and blue collar Democrats (so-called Reagan Democrats) during the 20 years of Reagan/Bush/Bush. Now the Reagan Coalition is fragmented, and again an unpopular war is one factor. I've never understood how the Republicans could hold together a coalition of corporate conservatives, free market conservatives, big and small business, so-called independents, and social conservatives for so long without splintering. Maybe it required exogenous events: the Iraq war and the incompetence of G. W. Bush
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