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i'm not sure i see an explicit fracturing of the republican party, but it seems that there will be and to some extent already is a refiguring of the demographic/political coalition that the republicans had built starting in the late 1970s. and like others have said, what happens to palin is a function of how that plays out.
things are still in pretty heavy registers of flux out there in the big wide world at the moment, so it's hard to see what might happen.
my guess is that the fracturing of neoliberalism is going to shift political discourse in general away from conservative identity politics and it's multi-hued reworking of the basic tenants of neo-fascism. so i see the populist dimension of the right coalition as becoming increasingly separated from the economic conservatives, more moderate types, social conservatives whose motivations are not those of the religious right. if obama wins, and wins by a considerable margin, this shake-out will probably happen very quickly.
the problem is the size and power of the machinery assembled by the christian coalition and the dependence on that machinery the republicans have developed. there's no rehab for this sort of problem, no doctor drew, no cameras in the clinic that will let us watch. this is a real organizational Problem for the republicans and i do not know how they are going to deal with it. if the scenario i outline above comes to pass, then you'll see a split coming out of the inability of the gop to extricate itself from this grass-roots level machinery the dependence upon which comes with the price--and that price is poujadiste style far-right identity politics.
this could be very bad indeed for the right.
but i suspect i'm being overly optimistic.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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