Peter Beinart has a column today calling for the GOP to create their own DLC -- an institution capable of facing down the party's base and freeing the candidates from some of their more insane litmus tests.
Today's GOP needs an organization strong enough to fight the hegemony of the Iowa caucuses, where hard-right activists dominate and centrist candidates go to die. It needs think tanks that offer serious answers on global warming and universal health care, where conservative orthodoxy is increasingly detached from political reality. And it needs to open up more primary voting to independents, the people who powered John McCain's crusade against the party base in 2000.
And maybe it does! But I'm unconvinced. The Democrats took over in 2006 because the Iraq War went to hell and a few key members of the GOP went to jail. I'd like to believe that the electorate was reacting to the party's position on stem cell research and health care financing, but I don't buy it. That said, these narratives telling parties to change everything in the wake of defeat rarely tend to have much connection to the reality of the exit polls and the context of the election, so we may as well try to use this moment to push the GOP towards becoming a constructive force in American life rather than a bundle of xenophobic anxieties and class resentments. So I'm with Peter. "Serious answers on global warming and universal health care" are the Republican Party's only path back to relevance.
