I am thinking back to 1976, when the Republicans took a beating even worse than they did in 2008. A mere 4 years later, they came back with a vengeance behind Reagan. I would never underestimate them.
A lot is going to depend on the next 12 to 15 months. If Obama remains popular and the U.S. economy – the global economy, really, shows improvement; if we really wind down in Iraq; if Afghanistan doesn’t turn into Vietnam (as it did for the Soviets), then I’d say the Republicans are going to stay right where they are now. They may pick up a governor’s mansion or two, or a few seats in Congress, but they’ll remain ineffectual.
They will not lie down and die. They will just bide their time, like they did during the FDR years. I hope they will reinvent themselves somehow. Neconservatism is dead, dead, dead, but they just won’t bury the body. To overextend the metaphor, the corpse is starting to stink, and the public isn’t showing much sympathy.
If things get considerably worse economically, if we have foreign policy fiascos like Iran in 1979, then Obama and the Democrats could suffer the same fate they did in 1980. However, I think it’s fair to say right now that the fate of the Republican party is not in their own hands, and there is no charismatic figure like Reagan to lead them out of the wilderness.
They’re in bad shape. But they are far from going away.