by Roger Prather

Created on: November 30, 2008

Some ideologues have suggested that the electoral landslide victory of Barack Obama is just another nail in the coffin of the Republican Party. However, popular vote tallies from the 2008 election indicate otherwise. Forty-six percent of American voters cast ballots for John McCain - hardly indicative of a dying GOP. However, what Americans will begin to witness is a realignment of party values and approaches on both sides of the aisle, due to the type of president Barack Obama says he's going to be and the type of president George W. Bush has been over the last eight years.

Barack Obama drew voters from some previously unlikely areas. According to one Economist article, a large swath of conservatives, particularly libertarians, moved away from the traditional Republican coalition to vote for Obama. Barack Obama's willingness to acknowledge the importance and usefulness of free markets to acheive policy objectives was a major reason for this. More than any other candidate in the last forty years, Obama seems to be the one who can return the Democratic Party to its modern, JFK-like roots: socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and strong on defense. The conservative-talk-show mantra that liberals revere Jack Kennedy, but that Jack Kennedy would be a Republican today, may no longer have substance or effect. Over the last decade, the Democratic Party has been accused of losing its vision and brand identity - existing as nothing more than a hodgepodge of liberal, issue-oriented groups who tend to vote in unison. Obama now has the opportunity as the default Democratic leader to change the brand and cast the Democrats off in a new, principle-oriented direction and drawing many former Republicans in with him.

Even more than Obama's ability to re-brand the Democrats, George W. Bush's abandonment of Republican branding over the last eight years drove some traditional allies away. Again, the libertarian sector of the Republican coalition was largely affected. The Bush administration pushed and approved the largest increase in the size of national government since the New Deal and Great Society initiatives of FDR and LBJ, hardly a conservative move. He also began and continues to support a seemingly never ending War on Terror with fuzzy objectives and even fuzzier strategy. In the 1980s, the Republican Party gained strength when neo-conservatives (social liberals in favor of interventionist foreign policy) and libertarian-leaning liberals were drawn in by Ronald Reagan and his common-sense approach to government. After eight years of Bush, neo-cons have had ample reason to rethink their positions, and libertarians have plenty of evidence to suggest that they and Republicans aren't always on the same page. The new challenge for the GOP is also to re-brand their identity and stand on consistent principles that voters can recognize and identify with. Most importantly, it must be a brand that Americans will vote for.

The interplay of issues in both of the major political parties puts them in a position to begin working on their own identities over the next decade. Democrats are now challenged to retain the power they've won across the board by creating a principled stance that reaches out to the average voter as well as the intellectual base. In like manner, Republicans are challenged to recreate themselves to appeal, perhaps once again, to the voters they've lost. In either case, the Democrats, if they don't get on the same page, have the potential to mess this up. As for Republicans, they're far from dead, but definitely feeling a little under the weather.

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