Granby01033

If you're old enough to remember the 1950s, you probably remember President Dwight Eisenhower. You may have even voted for him. Eisenhower was a Republican, but not right-winger. It's hard to imagine now, but once upon a time, the Far Right, the Goldwater wing, was only a small portion of the GOP.

By 1968, President Nixon had begun to speak to the insurgency Goldwaterites, the John Birch Society, and by 1972, he had them working for him. Much of the time, however, Nixon only worried about himself and foreign policy. He let domestic policy slide (much like The Worst President Ever, but with better people working for him).

President Reagan actually represented the Goldwater wing of the party. It's hard to recall it now, but he scared the hell out of a lot of people. The Great Communicator, however, knew how to soft-pedal his conservatism. And as out of touch as Reagan was on many things, he was markedly more realistic about, well, reality.

Today's Republican Party is wacked, nutsy fagan, around the bend. And as He Who Must Be Read says, they are not only endangering their own existence, but they are endangering the entire country.

[In 1964], the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.

Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. Thus in 2004 George W. Bush ran on antiterrorism and “values,” only to announce, as soon as the election was behind him, that his first priority was changing Social Security.

But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.

Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.

In the short run, this may help Democrats, as it did in that New York race. But maybe not: elections aren’t necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They’re often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration’s job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

--Mb