Bad Political Strategy - GOP's All Eggs In One Basket

Over the past two to four years, the Republican Party has put all their political eggs in one basket and that basket has been the old reliable social conservative voting block which has lead them to many victories over the years. Now with the Mark Foley scandal and the news that GOP leaders looked the other way when they first found out that one of their own was talking dirty to teens online; this whole election strategy is falling apart and there is really no doubt that Democrats will prevail in this November’s congressional elections. The real truth is that many of the rest of us mainstream Republicans had already stopped supporting the current GOP leadership long ago because fiscal issues always seemed to take a back seat to the social conservative agenda or to big business campaign contributors in the corporate world.

I guess it was just a matter of time before the GOP did something dumb from a moral point of view which would cause outrage from social conservatives. While there are leaders on the far right, mainly religious folks who advise the faithful, most religious right voters are a very independent bunch of folks who will be outraged at the allegation that Representative Foley preyed on young boys who were in Washington working in the Congress to further their education. The sad truth is that the alleged emails attributed to Mark Foley are only a small portion of why far right social conservatives will not vote for Republicans this fall. The very fact that the GOP had a homosexual in its leadership is enough for millions of religious conservatives to NOT vote for GOP candidates this fall.

Anytime a political party decides to put the interests of a small but motivate group of people ahead of everyone else, that party runs a risk of a complete meltdown when and if something goes terribly wrong inside that voter base this close to an election. From a purely political point of view, extreme ideological voters will never be satisfied with any political party all the time, because the very nature of extremism demands constant change to force others to follow their ridged way of thinking. The Democratic Party understands all to well what will happen when an extreme fringe becomes too powerful. This type of alliance will eventually drive mainstream Americans away from the extremist and cause them to look elsewhere for leadership. There was a time when people with extremist views were shunned because of their lack of mainstream thinking. However, with fewer people voting that ever before, extremist have set the agenda in American politics now for several decades.

While I believe the Democratic Party will most likely take control of the Congress in November, they should not get too comfortable in their new leadership position because their victory will be short lived if they go back to their history of following too closely to their own extreme, liberal, base. Core voters are an important part of getting elected to public offices, but putting all of ones eggs in one basket doesn’t make sense and the events of the past few days prove, once again, that when that basket falls and eggs are broken, political starvation can’t be far behind.