A conflict between hardline conservatives and moderates in Virginia resulted yesterday in the ouster of the state party chair. By a vote of 57 – 18, the conservative chairman (during the presidential campaign, he’d compared Obama to Osama bin Laden) was sent packing. One probably shouldn’t draw too firm a conclusion from this though as there have been six chairpersons in six years.
Still, as this reporting in the Washington Post suggests, the conflict here is between hardline party activists (“we must stick to conservative – ie talk radio/religious right – principles”) versus party leaders and politicians who consider that the future will be bleak if the party continues on in that mode.
This, of course, is precisely the debate that is raging in Republican communities nationwide following serious electoral losses in the last two elections at both federal and state levels, most acutely where the constituency is changing in demographics or voting patterns towards the Dems.
This won’t be an easy shift for the party to make. Most of the organizational mechanisms that it has established over the last three decades or so were designed precisely to drive the party right and to marginalize moderate voices and candidates. Moderate conservative talk-radio? If you find it anywhere on the dial outside of NPR, you’ll deserve some sort of needle/haystack award. High-powered and well-funded national activist groups like Norquist’s who aren’t pushing some extremist fundamentalism? I know of none. And as in this case in Virginia, local activism clearly reflects the same trend.
As I noted in an earlier post a couple of days ago, Strassel in the Wall Street Journal tried to convince herself or her readers (god knows what was in her noggin) that the left is frightened of Eric Cantor. Head-shakingly obtuse. What the left is actually concerned with is 1) that the obstructionism of the modern right will inhibit effective and necessary governance or 2) that the Republican party will finally move to a philosophy and promotional style which actually can compete.
But the first of those looks far more likely and any serious and broad change will probably depend on another election defeat or two.
Update: On a clearly related matter… The End of Christian America?
