| | In the article, Ed said, Republicans want to win elections. And most favor a freer market economy with more limited government. But they must also understand the need for a culture of individualism as the foundation of a free society."
There is a lot of truth there, but there are still problems. While all Republicans want to win elections, they don't agree on how to do that, and some don't want government to be more limited - at least not in all areas.
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There are four major sources of change that are, or will, act on the GOP... that I can see.
1. There is Mother Time who continues to replace one generation with the next. What will younger Republicans hold as their primary beliefs that are different from those they are replacing? For example: Will there be more or fewer who are primarily religious? Will their way of holding their religious beliefs be more tolerable to the voters? I suspect that new generations will still have as many evangelicals who want to express their opinions politically. Will there be as many new GOP fans as in the past? I also suspect that colleges and universities will continue to turn out many more progressives than libertarians. We are seeing the parents of the baby boomers dying - they represented a significant block in the GOP. What happens when their children, the baby-boomers pass on?
2. The struggle against the Democrats is one of the ways the GOP defines and structures itself - as a reaction. We have all seen how the recent elections were viewed through ethnic lenses. The cry is that Hispanics voted against the GOP. The result is energy inside the GOP to find ways to appeal to Hispanics. This reaction-thing isn't a simple factor to analize since social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, RINOs, and GOP moderates and the GOP establishment are all going to have different takes and make different judgments and push out in different ways in adjusting to what they see as the new political landscape.
3. Each of the different factions within the GOP have somewhat different goals. We just saw the GOP establishment (Speaker Boener and his Whip Team) strip Fiscal conservative and libertarian-leaning house members of their committee positions. Is that a trend where the establishment believes that they must move the party to the left to succeed in the future? There is a powerful bias for a two party system. It is nearly impossible for a third party to win an election. Because of that, the goal is for libertarians to capture the GOP - to move it into their principles. But I see that what was a powerful drive in that direction seems to have hit a wall.
4. Major national events - major crisis often act as pivot points for major political change - change for the better or for the worse. I think that the Republican Party is very nearly dead now. It is my guess that we will march toward increasingly larger government and more and more damaging regulations and laws. And, before too long, we will suffer the economic consequences of progressive policies (which have been promoted in differing degrees by both parties). This crisis will be blamed on the Republicans and on Wall Street and on the rich. The Republicans will blame the Democrats but their voices will be drowned out, or just not carried in the mainstream media. As a result, the crisis will be leveraged by the progressives for massively bigger government and more control. The further down this path we go, the greater the social and cultural and political stress and factionalism - a tense and uncomfortable period.
I don't think that there will be a time for limited government to arise as a successful topic until yet another crisis hits - and that being the one where government can no longer borrow or print. Eventually they will not only run out of other people's money, but of markets that will loan to them, and markets that will accept dollars.
The only efficacy this government has now comes from the ability to tax, borrow, and/or print enough to continue to buy people's hopes. When that is gone, they'll be seen as impotent and the state of economic misery will be such that limited government proponents will be heard. The hatred for an Uncle Sam that no longer has a bag of goodies to dispense will be enormous.
I suspect that we are close to the first crisis I mentioned, and the time between then and the economic bottom... I don't know. I do know that downward spirals pick up extraordinary speed as they progress.
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