Creative Destruction In the Republican Party

We see the results of creative destruction all around us as new innovative businesses take market share and profits from older complacent companies.  Walmart displacing Sears and the business centers of small towns, Compaq and Dell unseating IBM, Microsoft rising and now Google ascending to challenge them.  Amazon changing an entire industry, and lest we forget, electronic media usurping print media in news delivery.

The Republican party is, hopefully, undergoing this type of reinvention right now.  This would be the third time the GOP has seen this happen in modern political times (since the Great Depression), while the Democratic party has remained essentially unchanged as demonstrated by the current administration's policies which hearken back to FDR and his grand coalition.

The first occurrence began with Reagan running in 1976 and resulted in his election in 1980.  Many events coalesced to bring about a sea change in the way Americans thought about themselves and their country.  The Republicans were at their lowest ebb after Watergate, but the 70's brought stagflation on the economic front, international failures from Vietnam to the Iranian hostage situation, a president in Jimmy Carter who was not up to the task and one who lost hope for America, and a nationwide frustration as the consequences of the anything goes 60's resulted in a loss of a sense of moral direction.  Roe v. Wade was the last straw for many religious Americans who had never been involved in politics before. 

Then, in the early 90's something else began to happen.  Newt Gingrich began to believe that Republicans could actually eat into the Democrat majority in the House and began to recruit exciting new candidates to run as Republicans.  Newt pushed aside the lame leadership of Bob Michaels and came up with the Contract With America, stating explicitly what the Republicans would do if they had the power to do it.  The GOP picked up 54 seats in the 1994 elections and ended forty years of Democrat control of congress.  While Newt spearheaded the revolution, it was once again main street Americans, tired of business as usual, who decided to get involved and vote for change.

Now, here we are at another cusp.  Even without a leader to rally around, main street has met the grass roots and we are all Tea Partiers now.  As in the late 70's, we have a president who seems in over his head, who scolds rather than inspires, we have dangers internationally that the administration bumbles and falters over, and a bad economy suffering from a hopefully brief return to failed Keynesian policies of the past.  And as in 1994, we have a horrible national health care plan that Americans know intuitively will be a budget breaker and boondoggle.  The stage is set.  Will the Republican party respond as it has in the past with creative destruction?  Or will it try to play both sides, hoping to benefit from the Tea Partiers without actually embracing the reason for the Tea Parties.  Let's hope history repeats itself.