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WaPo writer E.J. Dionne, an unremitting liberal but a good observer and a genuinely nice guy — I interviewed him when he was on a book tour years ago and still chat with him now and then — has a perhaps triumphalist but somewhat valid insight into the conditions of the two parties (or two branches of the Government Party) as shown by their choices of national chairman. He suggests that the quiet naming of Va. Gov. Tim Kaine as Dem national chair, who had a lot to do with Virginia going Democratic over the last several years suggests the Dems are into outreach and expanding their base.
By contrast the Republicans are having a six-way dogfight for national chairman in which they are “less focused on how to expand their party’s appeal than on hunkering down to preserve ideological purity,” as E.J. puts it. It might turn out that being more consistently conservative is the key to growing the party or that a conservative leader in the mold of Reagan will emerge to lead the party out of the wilderness. But I suspect the party will be in the wilderness for some time to come, especially if it doesn’t rethink its love affair with war and international adventurism in a world virtually devoid of genuine existential threats to the U.S.
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