The republican brand is in the crapper. It went from big spreads in both the House and Senate and a dream of a "permanent republican majority" to a close to 20 seat deficit in the Senate (with more likely to come in 2010) and around 80 in the House. It lost the White House. Badly.
Its' core philosophies (and I am not buying this "the Bush year policies weren’t really republican or conservative" because when you have control of the entire government, you enact what you want) have destroyed our economy on a scale not seen in close to 100 years. Its aggressive and arrogantly ignorant foreign policy has ruined our credibility around the world (and nearly bankrupted us). The levels of cronyism have led to billions of dollars being "misplaced" or sent to friends on no-bid contracts for crappy work. The culture of corruption has led to indictment after indictment after indictment of republican Congressional officials, the politicizing of the Justice Department and the burrowing of wholly unqualified people into major policy, leadership and civil service roles.
It has presided over a crisis that has lost more jobs in decades, has fattened corporate wallets at the expense of We the People, has seen a decline in our educational standards (and scores), has enriched the pharmaceutical and insurance companies at the expense of affordable access to healthcare. It has let a major American city drown in what was nothing short of criminal negligence.
It allowed for the murder of thousands on 9/11 with the careless disregard for warning after warning. It allowed the deaths of many rescue workers, the death of close to 1,000,000 Iraqis for a "mistake" and the death of hundreds (if not more) in the Gulf Coast. It has failed to do anything meaningful about the root cause of terrorism and has made us less safe.
When finally in the minority in Congress, the republicans merely set a record for most filibusters of all time. And they did it in just one year.
It has alienated entire races of people, it has alienated immigrants, it has alienated same sex couples, it has alienated the lower class, the middle class and much of the upper class. Its members have lied, blown off subpoenas, have been convicted of sex crimes (many times over), covered up for sexual predators who were in charge of underage Congressional Pages, were convicted of election fraud and have tampered with elections on the Congressional and Presidential level in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. And during the past six years, culminating with the recent Presidential campaign, it has thrived off of fear and loathing. Fear of anything that isn’t precisely like them, and loathing of anything that isn’t, well, precisely like them.
It is a party that felt its best way to win is to use violent rhetoric (at the worst possible time, of course) to rile up its base – based on lies and the most tenuous of "guilt by association". Most of all, it has shown that it has no vision, no ideas other than hate, and has demonstrated exactly what it would do if it could control all of government.
This was the third straight cycle (2004 and 2006 as well) that young voters came out for Democrats. And generally speaking, if someone votes for the same party in three straight cycles (especially their first three cycles), they pretty much stick with that party for life. The timing couldn’t be better for a long stretch of Democratic party dominance.
Quite simply, we should be hanging the tag "republican" on all of these disasters that they caused. The republican depression. The republican corporate welfare. The failed republican foreign policy. The republican culture of corruption. The republican obstructionists. The republican tax cuts for the wealthy. The republican neglect of our infrastructure.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
The beauty here is on a number of levels – for starters, it is true. Secondly, it doesn’t only destroy the brand (which is already destroyed for now), but it destroys the entire party identification. And third, it does it at a time when this country is seeing the full "fruit of the republican party’s actions" and at a time when it is not likely to regain significant power for a number of years.
And the less people who identify themselves as republicans (even if they try the "we are conservatives and the republican party hasn’t been" route, which requires explanation and qualifications – neither of which is a good thing) – the better.
Update [2008-12-8 8:32:59 by clammyc]: ok, so I changed the title to say "Republican" with a capital letter. I have always used lowercase as a protest, but I don't want the comments to be full of "change the title to capitalize" so I am doing it for that reason.