The Republican party of Eisenhower and Dole, Ford and McCain, began its decline a long time ago, sometime between the toppling of Nixon and the rise of Reagan. The new conservatives have hijacked the GOP using the rhetoric of Goldwater but the morals of McCarthy--and they are here to stay. They are going through hard times now, just as the Democrats did after Jimmy Carter, but all they need is a some catastrophe which can be blamed on the Democrats and they will be right back.

What I find more disturbing is that the Republican constituency has changed. It used to be the financially secure, the beneficiaries of society, people who were naturally conservative and rightfully suspicious of change, but who often also displayed a certain noblesse oblige and deep respect for the system. There was a quiet patriotism there that often expressed itself as public service and a somewhat patronizing, but nonetheless sincere, compassion for the unfortunate.

The Right is now courting a different constituency, the Limbaugh/Coulter audience, the Reagan Democrats, the Joes (Sixpack and Plumber) and the NASCAR Nation. This is the party of Palin, the New Right has somehow managed to convince their followers that the liberals are all rich, overeducated and effeminate dilettantes and that the reason REAL Americans are suffering economically is because this wealthly elite wants to keep them down. (The redneck version of Da Man).

The Neocons have adopted class warfare as a tactic, and they are appealing to the only class they can still count on, the disposessed, declining and exploited white underclass. These are the people who felt betrayed by the civil rights revolution, found their religion under attack by the culture, who lost their livelihoods to Reaganomics, and who are desperate to explain away the loss of American military and economic hegemony as a conspiracy of foreigners and atheists and, of course, Commies.

The Right lost the last election because they failed to convince this base that they could win wars and bring prosperity, but the American decline of the early part of the millenium can, at best, only be slowed down by Democratic leadership, it's not likely anyone, right or left, can reverse it. The Republicans will be back, but it won't be the party of the good-citizen community businessman or the respected neighborhood merchant. It will be the party of the dispossesed, the angry, the spiteful. And anyone not with them will be against them.

Listen carefully to Limbaugh and Coulter and Palin. Imagine their audience, the people they are talking to and trying to reach. That is the new face of the Republican Party. Beware all liberals, and beware all conservatives of good will, too.