James Carville, on the GOP's dilemma:
In a excerpt [of his new book] provided to the Huffington Post, the man known as the Ragin Cajun notes that the voting power of the Christian Right has declined precipitously over the past forty years even as the GOP's reliance on the coalition has risen.
[...]
And yet, even as their numbers dwindle, Christian conservatives still are defining the GOP. Citing data from pollster Alan Abramowitz of Emory University showing that Republican identification among conservative married white Christians increased from 64 percent to 90 percent during the past 30 years, Carville concludes that "there's nowhere to go from 90 percent, and Republicans aren't winning moderate and liberal Christians."
The data points to a larger Carville conclusion: that Democrats are on the precipice of a forty-year era of political dominance...
There were plenty of reasons to think back in 2007 that we were on the verge of a transformative election in 2008 (as I discussed here, here, here and here). Indeed, historians may view the 2008 election, like those of 1896 and 1932, as one that heralded a lasting electoral coalition. If Barack Obama and the Democrats continue to perform well, one can see a scenario in which Democrats dominate national politics like they did from 1932 through 1968.
In low-turnout elections like those in the 1990's, the Republicans were helped tremendously by a zealous base with a large representation of politically and socially conservative evangelical Christians. But in order to get those Congressional victories in the 90's, and to eke out victories like Bush's 2004 win (in which Karl Rove used fearmongering on same-sex marriage to boost turnout among older evangelicals who might otherwise not have voted), Republicans had to promise their base just about whatever they asked for. The Republicans' relationship with their base became similar to that of indulgent parents with their spoiled children.
It's a cruel irony that Republicans have embraced creationism and rejected evolutionary theory, for in evolutionary theory they might have found a useful cautionary lesson. Often, when a species—or, as Jared Diamond has demonstrated, even a society—becomes overspecialized or over-reliant on some resource for its survival, a minor environmental change forces the species (or social group) to adapt or die off. Sometimes the species doesn't have the means to successfully adapt, and they become extinct.
Will the Republicans adapt? Can they embrace greater tolerance, not be perceived as forsaking their fundie base, and thus avoid the curse that they've become modern-day Judases? The behavior of the Republicans suggest they won't adapt. That fits what Carville heard from Republicans:
"Before I wrote this, by the way, I went to any number of Republican wise people and said 'tell me where this is wrong?' And they said, 'I can't.' Their conversation is always: we've lost a generation. Reagan brought a generation in. Remember, Reagan used to do better with younger voters than he did with the rest of the population and they're gone."
The Republicans brought this on themselves by ceaselessly indulging their angry, intolerant, unyielding and shrinking base. As Paul wrote in Galatians, "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
Or, to put it in a more modern fashion, karma's a bitch.