[Politics]

Brownback and the Splintering GOP

It's not surprising that as the GOP splinters, leaders will begin to lead their factions off away from the ruling coalition. The Times reports today that Sam Brownback is considering running in '08 on a platform of bringing God into public life. While fiscal conservatives have long run alongside "mainstream" Republicans (think Forbes), their constituents were easily gobbled back up into the coalition afterward. But it's hard to see how a radical like Brownback can simultaneously rally the(literally) faithful without turning them forever away from the lesser faithful he runs against (like Bill Frist):

"I am giving you a bit of a different message here today," he told the St. Anselm students. "A lot of it is a very Republican message. But hopefully a big core of it is a, very hopefully, faith in politics message."

People who are convinced by the faith-in-politics approach are different from other voters; unlike fiscal conservatives, they won't switch from a losing candidate who represents faith and join a majoritarian candidate who has spent months being excoriated by the losing candidate. Republicans have spent over a decade depending on this kind of loyalty; if they use it against each other, they'll find it has a pretty hefty downside. (And actually, at this point, fiscal conservatives may not offer their loyalty without hesitation, either.)

Let the splintering begin!