When faced with news that most Republicans believe that ACORN stole the election for Obama, that Doug Hoffman is blaming voter fraud for his NY-23 loss without a shred of evidence, that Sarah Palin is the GOP's favorite rogue politician, and that conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck is becoming more popular than Bill O'Reilly, most astute political observers make the same observation: the GOP has been taken over by a semi-lunatic fringe.
That much is clear. But what political observers should be asking themselves is: Will Republicans actually turn out to vote?
The evidence suggests that they might not. While analyses of the 2009 elections are still ongoing, the debate is largely focused on two competing contentions: were Democrats (outside of NY-23) hurt more by independents shifting to Republicans, or by depressed Democratic turnout? While the evidence is somewhat contradictory, it seems quite likely that the problem was Democratic turnout.
But almost no one is claiming increased Republican turnout--because it didn't happen. That's a very troubling sign for a Party as seemingly motivated and hostile to the Administration as the town-hall-going, tea-party-attending Republicans have been. If Democratic turnout returns in 2010 to levels even remotely approaching 2008 while Republican turnout remains stable, Republicans will be required to win over massive numbers of independents to make significant gains in the House where the deck is stacked in their favor, and to keep things even in the Senate where they are on the defensive.
Upon further reflection, the reason for lack of increased GOP turnout may be the same as for their recent embrace of 1960s-era progressive tactics: Republicans may be losing confidence in the power of the ballot box to effectuate the changes they desire due to their belief in conspiracy theories. If so, that is a disastrous development, but one of their own karmic creation.
Progressives were faced with a similar challenge during the Bush years. Many on the Left became convinced by conspiracy theories indicating that a supremely genius and masterfully manipulative Bush Administration had orchestrated the 9/11 attacks to maintain permanent power, and that Democrats would never win another election because Diebold-controlled electronic voting machines would steal away every election under the cover of cold November nights.
Many organizations on the Left, including DailyKos, did their best to tamp down such rhetoric. The reasons varied, but one of the most important was that people who believe that their opponents are all-powerful dictators and election thieves lose confidence in the democratic process, and therefore don't help generate victories at the ballot box. Conspiracy theorists may turn out to protests, they may shout on the blogs, they may do all manner of political activity. But they largely won't phonebank. They won't canvass. They won't input data at a field office. They won't register voters. They won't, in short, do the work necessary to elections because they view it as a pointless exercise in perpetuating what they view as a fraudulent facade of a democracy.
Republicans are rapidly approaching the point at which the conspiracy theories necessary to keep their voters angry and delusional, may cause them to give up on the electoral process. An examination of search results for voter fraud or election fraud at FreeRepublic.com shows a trend that should terrify a Republican strategist: a widespread belief that massive numbers of dead people vote Democratic, that inner-city minorities vote dozens of times each, and that Democrats rig vote totals and recounts in their favor. They believe that any pollster not named Rasmussen is a fraudulent organization dedicated to depressing the GOP base. They believe that Obama's small-dollar donors do not exist, and that he was actually financed by George Soros and Saudi sheiks with terrorist ties to fund their foreign-born crypto-Muslim puppet. They believe, in short, that Republicans are incapable of winning elections fairly without first taking a number of steps to deal with their cobweb-like fantasies of ubiquitous Democratic fraud.
The sort of person who believes these things will not work to win elections. It used to be that such people constituted only the farthest fringe of the Republican electorate. Due to the pervasive influence of AM radio and Fox News, however, such people are now a majority of the Republican electorate.
This is the wild card of the 2010 elections and beyond: will the GOP turn out to vote? If conventional wisdom holds and the GOP makes moderate gains in the House but takes moderate losses in the Senate, will the base even bother with 2012? If Obama beats Sarah Palin by a wide margin in 2012, will the base abandon electoral politics entirely, choosing to fight by other means, including actual violence? What will happen as the GOP approaches its Wingularity?
It's a question that deserves more than a cursory examination.