Beutler compares the contemporary GOP to the pre-Clinton Democratic party:
Maybe a third defeat, in 2016, will catalyze a more rapid transition. But over time, I think the important differences between the Democrats’ old challenge and the challenge Republicans now face have started to show.
Democrats didn’t have an easy go of it, exactly, but they were able to modify their positions across a range of issues without, for instance, creating a left-wing-primary perpetual motion machine, or giving rise to a permanent population of resentful protest voters. Maybe Republicans can do the same. But the 2013 experience suggests they are so in hock to aging, white, conservative reactionaries that taking on new debts with minorities, gay people, single women and so on entails the risk of defaulting on the old ones.
Regardless, the GOP could win in 2016:
It is far too early to do a formal forecast for 2016. The economic and political conditions in that year will be paramount. But given that at least some in the GOP appear pessimistic as of today, it’s worth asking: If economic and political conditions in 2016 were the same as they are today, what would happen? So assume that Obama’s approval rating is about 41 percent. Assume that GDP has grown 1.6 percent in the first two quarters of 2016. And, of course, no incumbent will be running.
Based on those assumptions, the model predicts that the Republican Party has a 64 percent chance of winning the presidency. That is far from 100 percent, of course. At the same time, it doesn’t suggest much cause for GOP pessimism in January 2014 — maybe even some Democratic pessimism, in fact.
Should Republicans retake the White House, Chait predicts that they will ditch austerity:
Liberating themselves from austerity will allow them to back away from their brutal campaign of confiscating food stamps, Pell grants, and low-income tax credits, and still hand out tax cuts for the 1 percent. Tax cuts for one and all! That, after all, was the Bush formula: small elements of programmatic reform for low-income workers, stapled onto the agenda of The Wall Street Journal editorial page, all costs deferred.
A Republican Party that reprises the Bush era was a grim and unfathomable prospect in 2008, and is not exactly palatable now. But in the wake of the party’s thrall to Ayn Rand and Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, a return to Bushism sounds almost comforting.
The Dish 