What direction do you think the Republican Party is going to go?

[mod says] Please remember to save the jokes until the question has some serious answers.

It seems at least plausible that the party will split in two over just this question. There are many moderate Republicans, but the far right has held the controls for a long time. The far right will insist on going ever farther from the middle, while the moderates will want to distance themselves from the whole Palin side of things. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

I tend to think that the party will try to go moderate, but that the staunch conservatives that are in the party will not let it happen. I would love to see a third major party to end the stupid bipartisanship that we have in the country.

hellwards i hope

I hope they get it together. Although I’m a Democrat, I think our democracy needs at least two healthy parties. Maybe the Green and/or Libertarian parties will step up and fill the gap.

I tried to edit but it’s hard with the iPhone.
The Wig party dissapeared.

I just hope they separate religion from their politics and make it a very wide separation.

I hope they move to the middle, because if the Republicans get in next election I don’t want to live through 4 more years of dread. They have been hijacked by the religious right.

Part of me thinks that your typical Republican voter these days is probably looking for a more tolerant message….one which focuses on economic conservatism, but which is more socially moderate. On the other hand, your typical party ACTIVIST is probably taking most of their cues from Rush Limbaugh and the Catholic Church. Consider that in the primary and caucus season, you end up seeing one of two scenarios. If you have a candidate that really energizes people you will see a huge turnout in these types of things, otherwise you see the only the activists coming out, which will result in an extremist winning the party nomination. And the real excitement in the party right now is around people like Palin. To a lesser extent you have people like Ron Paul who energize one core group of people, but he represents such a threat to the status quo in Republican orthodoxy, no matter which direction you come at it from, that they would do to him, or anyone like him what they did before…minimize him and make him irrelevant. What’s going to happen in 2012, mark my words, is there’s going to be a war for the nomination, and the Limbaugh crowd is going to shout down any attempts to bring moderation, someone like Palin, perhaps Palin herself will get the nomination, because either there is a large turnout, because of the energy the extremist engenders, or you will see a fairly minimal turnout, and the extremists won’t even need to build the excitement to walk away with it. Unless Obama’s Presidency proves to be disasterous (which I HIGHLY doubt), the Republicans will be even further relegated to a regional party. By 2016, I think you’re going to see the rise of a third major party, probably libertarian in nautre which actually gets more votes than the Republican candidate, and might even win in 2020. By 2024, the Republicans will essentially be considered a small 3rd party and will never again win a Presidential election.

That’s what I see in my crystal ball.

Maybe due south down the Appalachian trail.

Find a better Vice President candidate next time.

the Reps getting their asses handed to them was the best thing that could’ve happened to the party. They will have to move towards the center to get anywhere from now on, unless the Dems really screw the pooch and push enough mods to the right. Obama has learned to stay away from any kind of federal gun bans so there is proof right there that politicians can learn.