There doesn't have to be a Reagan "waiting in the wings." Stars can appear at anytime.
Reagan was a two term governor governor of the largest state and had a coherent ideology and set of policies molded after years of governing and campaigning. He didn't exactly appear out of nowhere.
Usually when someone appears out of nowhere he/she becomes soon a disaster (see Sarah Palin, Dan Quale).
And the core ideology isn't damaged here either. It's grossly overstated by the media and people that want us to fail anyway.
Whether it was ideologically based or not, the GOP was in far worse shape in 1974 (and even through until probably 1978) than it is now.
The core ideology IS damaged. That's what the public says. After 30 years of tax-cutting and deregulation we have the biggest financial crisis since 1929 and you think the GOP can still go out there and promote the benefits of Reaganomics? Tell that to Alf Landon.
And of course the public has also little appetite for fearmongering, saber rattling and minority/gay bashing, the other tenets of the Republican ideology. Especially the younger generation.
The Republicans were in bad shape after Watergate but that was a Nixon orchestrated scandal which had nothing to do with conservative ideology. The president broke the law. He didn't enact policies that damaged the nation at large.
And as I mentioned the Republican leaders like Goldwater and Baker abandoned Nixon when his guilt became obvious. That saved their credibility with the voters in the long term.
Compare their stance with the fealty McConnel, Bhoener, Hastert, DeLay and the rest of the gang showed to Bush, even at his most egregious excesses. Hell, even now they prefer to defend torture rather than denounce him and his policies. How they expect to convince the people that they are not the party of Bush?
And, again, you point out how the Dems had massive gains in the House that were eventually corrected a couple cycles later. That's what some of us are saying will happen if two huge recent elections for the Dems!
No, they won't come back because there has been a realignment. The Republicans aren't going to win back their seats at the Northeast, just like the Democrats never took back the seats they lost in the South in 1994.
You read my mind. Then again, my mind isn't complex enough for those words, imagine those words as a pop up picture book.
