The Future of the GOPDanny DeVito as 'Lawrence Garfield' in the movie
Other People's Money:
And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure. You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?
I wish to address "the future" of the GOP in the long term - more than a decade or two. So instead of looking at the most recent demographic trends, the latest cycle's polls, decadal redistricting, and the current crop of pols in power, let's look at worldwide trends of significant duration.
Religion: in modern industrialized nations people have been getting less and less religious. The USA has generally bucked this trend when compared to Europe, but has not escaped it entirely.
LINK I think the USA will continue to get less religious. Republicans? The party of buggy whips.
Science: to say that science has grown in worldwide popularity over the last century would be an absurd understatement. The GOP is a
growing refuge for the minority who see science as dangerous and/or evil.
Tolerance: a worldwide trend since the enlightenment, accelerating constantly almost everywhere. The GOP displays intolerance in a hundred different subtle ways, while of course trying not to adopt grossly and obviously intolerant official policies. They're not fooling enough of the electorate. The USA is becoming an increasingly tolerant society; the GOP is not.
Sexual and Reproductive Freedoms: related to most of the above. No real need for me to elaborate.
Environmentalism: not a big subject in the USA today compared to, say, 1972, but bound to grow in importance. World population continues to grow and food and water scarcity is already a looming world problem. When concern for environmental sustainability becomes a major election issue the GOP will
not be leading the way.
The Shrinking Globe: a trend since Roman times, interrupted by the dark ages. The world is becoming more interdependent and interrelated. There's more need than ever for intergovernmental cooperation. The GOP sees this as "world governance" or "one-worldism" and wants instead to produce better buggy whips.
The Role of the USA in World Affairs: since peaking in the early 1950's or thereabouts, the USA has slowly been becoming less and less essential in its role as "leader of the free world". We still are that but... the role evolves, and generally gets diminished over time. There are two ways to deal with that: go with the flow and evolve as needed or fight the trend and insist upon being forever a 1950's-type USA. Americans are still very patriotic and the GOP can still win lots of votes by refusing to admit that the USA is only
primus inter pares. But...
Patriotism: losing ground hand-in-hand with jingoistic nationalism. It's just part of modern life. Why should one country deserve more of our emotional attachment than the (shrinking) world at large? As I sense things, the world is becoming less and less nationalistic and patriotic. Slowly. The USA certainly hasn't led this charge; far from it, but I sense a very slight lessening even here. If this trend accelerates, as I think likely, the GOP will certainly be the party trying hardest to sell more buggy whips.
Maybe our GOP loyalists here can point to some significant long-term worldwide trends that favor the GOP's brand and will counteract some of the above. Undoubtedly they won't see things as I do regarding the above, but I'm here only present a thesis, not to debate. My thesis is that trends like the above doom the GOP, decade by decade, to increasing marginality. Of course, my thesis falls apart with the simple suggestion that while the GOP may be on the wrong side of these trends today, it will change its stripes. Can it? That's a subject for another time.