Fringe Republicans

Republicans are heading for a pyrrhic victory in this U.S. election year. Why this is so was just demonstrated in Delaware. Christine O’Donnell, the candidate from the right-wing fringe of the Republican Party, knocked moderate Mike Castle out of the running in the primary election. What had been considered an almost certain Republican takeover of a traditionally Democratic Senate seat was lost internally. O’Donnell is far too extreme to be elected in this traditionally Democratic state. And there isn’t just one Delaware; there are dozens of them. Across the United States, highly motivated Tea Party rebels are abandoning old-school conservatives. Since the Republican heyday, there has been less and less room for those reasonable voices for whom realpolitik is more important than ideology.

A few rebels in dependably Republican districts may well be washed into Congress on the wave of general discontent over unemployment and record deficits. They will help make up the face of a new Republican Party, a party that has little in common with the same party under George Bush, Ronald Reagan or Dwight D. Eisenhower. It makes no sense to transform it into a party based on the fears of southern, white fundamentalists and ideologues, at least not in the multicultural America of the 21st century. When the winds of public opinion eventually shift again, the Republican Party will be left behind as a party more marginalized than it was under George W. Bush.