Is the GOP in Decline?

The people have spoken, but demographic changes may come into play by the 2008 election. 

Is the GOP in trouble?

It seems odd to say after the Republicans gained in the House and Senate, and at a time when more people voted for George W. Bush than any other candidate for president in the nation's history.

Yet on MSNBC's Hardball, conservative icon Pat Buchanan said something striking: that the Republican party is on the decline. "It is a mostly white party," he would say. "And it is literally dying."

Meanwhile, in a losing effort, new liberal organizations sprouted up to wage a ground campaign. New activists were recruited and trained. The Republcans, in a winning effort, did not expand their base that much...they just got more of their base to come to the polls (Latinos went up 7%, urban 8%, Jewish 5%, Catholic 4%, and female voters 4%...but that was compared to 2000 when all of those numbers were down from previous years).

Could the 2004 election be the Democrats' Barry Goldwater moment?

Goldwater, an icon of the conservative movement, inspired young conservatives to get involved in what became the Reagan Revolution. Yet in 1964 he and the Republican party were beaten badly in the polls. The activists took over the party, and four years later Richard Nixon would take the White House.

Yet in 1965 most people felt that the GOP was finished. Many conservatives were crushed, in the same way that some liberals are today.

This is not absolute, however. The fight for hispanic voters will determine who the majority party is. The Republicans will recruit them through morality issues, while Democrats will keep to its pro-immigrant roots.

Yet ultimately, as Ron Reagan Jr. has said, "the Democcrats have to stand for something and stick with it."

Otherwise 2008 will be another year of voting against the other guy, and Republicans have proven they will win that election.

Yet more people voted for John Kerry than any other Democrat in history. More people went out to the polls. More people got involved.

In the second Bush term, the president will define the political map for years to come. They will have to expand beyond it's current one, ethnically at least, to maintain a majority for the future.

It will be the Democrats job to transform its own party to become relevant again.

2008 could be another close one.