The Republican Party died last night.
Somewhere in the suburbs of Cleveland, on the shore of Lake Erie, in the decisions of some suburban voters, the Republican Party stopped being a nationally viable political organization.
Oh, it will continue to exist.
But it will likely never again truly contest for the presidency. The nation has changed, the values have been replaced, the demographics are different.
The demographics are insurmountable.
Last night was a tipping point, a dance on a razor’s edge, and it went the other way. What was undoable last night will become increasingly impossible with each passing year. The margins will grow, the base will shrink, the tide will turn and the day will pass.
The Republican Party died last night.
Oh, it will continue to exist.
There will be the name and the elephants, but nationally, conservatism is playing against an impossibly stacked deck.
The nation had a clear choice. Each party ran candidates who were true to type. The Republicans ran conservatives and the Democrats ran liberals and it was a rout. Nothing changed except that Republicans got rebuffed across the board.
America wants Democrat.
More specifically, America wants liberal. It wants an activist, empowered government, imposing fairness and supporting entitlement.
That’s what America wants.
At least half of it wants that. Half and a tiny bit more.
And the inexorably shifting demographics of the nation ensure that that tiny bit more will grow steadily, cementing the liberal majority and creating an electoral impossibility of replacing it.
Last night was the last chance.
It was the last chance to gain a last national electoral victory over the Democratic coalition – Latinos, blacks, gays, feminists, trade unionists, government employees and welfare beneficiaries. The last chance to let a Republican president advocate the conservative, constitutional principles upon which American society was built.
But America said, “No, thanks.”
The majority preferred more of the last four years to anything Mitt Romney and the Republicans were offering.
The constituent communities of that majority are only going to grow in size and prominence in American society. They are going to increasingly dominate our society and politics.
Four years from now, more of the older conservative voters will be dead, and more of the younger liberal voters will be registered to vote. The Latino community, essentially co-opted by the Democrats into an aggrieved permanent minority status, will, like black voters, be larger and more Democrat. Four years from now, the cultural shift away from traditional values will be more advanced, thanks to more brainwashing by school teachers and sitcoms.
Those members of our society who typically identify with the Democratic Party are increasing. Those members of our society who typically identify with the Republican Party are shrinking.
You do the math.
Certain, Republicans will keep running. And some of them, no doubt, will win. But they will be a different sort of Republican.
They will not be conservative. Certainly not socially or morally conservative.
They will bend over backwards to avoid the principles of moral conservatism, so as to not disrespect a social norm.
They will be Democrat-lite.
Or they will not win.
Last night was our best chance.
And America chose the other team.
Almost $3 billion was spent on the presidential campaign. Untold tens of millions of dollars were spent on congressional campaigns across the country. And nothing changed.
Obama is still in the White House. The Democrats still control the Senate. Republicans still control the House of Representatives. The pundits say America voted to break the grid lock, that it voted to demand team work. It did no such thing. It voted to maintain the status quo.
So we have gone on a long, painful and expensive national journey, and it has left us exactly where we started.
A couple of House seats this way, a couple of Senate seats that way, and Obama on top of the whole thing.
That isn’t change, that is business as usual.
Conservatism has become a regional philosophy, the Republican Party a regional party. It will win governorships, it will win seats in the House or Senate, but it will essentially be a phenomenon of the South and Midwest.
Where traditional values endure and dwindle, the Republican Party will still be relevant.
But those places will shrink and shrivel. And each year, the gap between those who support conservatism and the number needed to win a national victory will grow.
Last night was conservatism’s last stand.
And it lost.
The Republican Party died last night.
