Charlie Cook on the state of the post-election GOP:

We also learned that there are two Souths. There is a “New South,” which includes Virginia, North Carolina, and, to a lesser extent, Georgia. In this South, which has lots of suburbs, transplants, and younger college graduates, Obama and other Democrats won or ran well above the norm for their party. In the older South, which has more small-town and rural voters, fewer transplants, and a more downscale electorate, Obama actually performed worse than Kerry. In general, in the higher-growth segments of our country, Republicans lost ground, prevailing only in small towns and rural areas. When Democrats win the suburbs, Republicans are in trouble. Republicans have lost an enormous amount of support among upscale voters, basically just breaking even among those with household incomes above $50,000 a year, a traditional GOP stronghold. Similarly, McCain’s losing to Obama among college graduates and voters who have attended some college underscores how much the GOP franchise is in trouble. My hunch is that the Republican Party’s focus on social, cultural, and religious issues — most notably, fights over embryonic-stem-cell research and Terri Schiavo — cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters. The question now is whether Republicans will quickly learn from their mistakes — retooling and rebranding their party soon, putting themselves in a position to capitalize on the missteps of the Obama administration and the rest of the Democratic Party — or will languish, reduced to waiting for the Democrats to collapse and for GOP candidates to win simply because they aren’t Democrats.

My evil vision for the GOP: there’s no hope of resolving the division between the two wings of the party. One side has to win control: either the traditional big-money, fiscally conservative & socially moderate wing of the party takes back control, or the conservative Christians win out.

If the theocrats win, a good chunk of the fiscal conservatives would pretty much fit right in with today’s Democratic Party. Others may try to start a new party, and while they can certainly fund it, do they have the votes to get anywhere? I mean, there’s been a Libertarian Party for a long while now & they’ve not had much success. A Republican party taken over by the Sarah Palin wing of the party would probably continue the Republican party’s descent into being a nationally weak regional party.

On the other hand, I’m hard-pressed to bet against the wing of the party with the money. If the fiscal conservatives take back the party, what happens to the social conservatives? One possibility: isn’t it odd that the U.S., for all its religiosity, doesn’t have a major Christian Nationalist third party? I think they’d probably win some offices in the South and in rural parts of the country. As we’ve seen during the Bush years, they know how to run campaigns and win elections, which is more than you can say for most other third parties in this country, even those that have had some success.

I can’t decide if this hypothetical situation makes me happy or scared. On the one hand, I suspect it’d ensure Democratic dominance at a national level. On the other hand, if the Republican Party is unable to reassemble its coalition as in either of these two scenarios, there’s a decent chance of continued Democratic dominance in the short term no matter which side wins out for the Republicans: each wing is just too weak on their own. I’m also scared silly at the possibilities of an unchecked theocratic party gaining power throughout much of our country.

A more realistic scenario is that the Democrats win big for the next few years, but make enough mistakes that Republicans manage to settle their differences and win back some power. However, demographic trends suggest that this would ultimately lead to a weakening of the influence of the Religious Right has in the party, which is why I wouldn’t be surprised if leaders of the Religious Right try to go for broke with a third party strategy in the next few years.