This article was originally published on January 18th, 2007.-KWN
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I’ve been meaning to pen a piece on this subject for quite some time, and with today’s commentary on the future of the GOP by R4′08 colleague Republius, and by Editor Kavon in the comments of the same post, there’s no time like the present to articulate where I think the Republican Party is headed in 2008 and beyond.

In order to understand where we’re going, we first have to paint a clear picture of where we’ve been.? As of January of 2009, the country will have completed a forty-year period of largely divided government.? From January 20th, 1969 to January 20th, 2009, the presidency and both houses of Congress will have been in the hands of the same party for just over ten years out of forty, meaning that nearly 75 percent of the time, Americans did not permit single-party control of Washington.? This marks the single longest period of divided government in American history.? In other words, no other four-decade period can be found in the history of the Republic where the federal government was divided between the parties for?an equal or greater?proportion of the?time.? Instead, the norm throughout American history has been either center-right or center-left coalitions that are national in nature, that envelop most or all of the regions of the country, that produce large popular majorities in elections, and that provide one party with far more self-identifiers than the other.

To avoid a lengthy history lesson, I’ll just present a quick overview of the general political alignments throughout American history.? The post-Washington periods of American political history can be divided into roughly?six periods.

1) The Jeffersonian Democrat majority: 1800-1828

2) The Jacksonian Democrat majority: 1828-1860

3) The rise of Lincoln Republicanism: 1860-1896

4) The McKinley/Roosevelt GOP majority: 1896-1932

5) The FDR Democratic majority: 1932-1968

6) The Dealignment Period: 1968-present

In each of these periods except for #3 and #6, one party controlled the entire federal government most of the time.? Only the late 19th Century rivals what I now refer to as the Dealignment Period of the past four decades in terms of divided government, close elections, and regional polarization. And the former was a period of actual, literal civil war on American soil, followed by the reconstruction of the South. In other words, 2008 will mark the longest period in American history where no majority party has come into being.

Since the breakup of the Roosevelt coalition in 1968, many conservatives and Republicans have been promising the coming GOP realignment at every twist and turn. Nixon’s Silent Majority came and went in the early 1970s, leaving vast Democratic majorities in Congress despite electing a GOP president with over 60 percent of the vote. Reagan brought scores of former Democrats over to the GOP presidential ticket in the 1980s and even managed to help Republicans take the Senate, but the House remained hopelessly Democratic. Newt led the charge to take Congress in 1994, but a Democratic president was then easily reelected two years later. And GWB became the first Republican president in ages to win the White House along with GOP majorities in both houses of Congress in 2004, only to see those majorities disappear in 2006.

All of this has convinced me that many political analysts who have spent the past four decades waiting for the coming of realignment have been totally oblivious to the fact that what was actually going on was dealignment. Instead of a majority party, our country now boasts two minority parties, each with roughly the same number of self-identifiers, and each with a very narrow regional base. The result of such a system is that political independents and mavericks in each party get to decide who controls Washington at any given time. In other words, what we have in this country for the foreseeable future is a Tyranny of the Center.

In order to better understand this dynamic, let’s look at the last two elections. In 2004, we were a 37%-37% Republican country. In 2006, we were a 38%-36% Democratic country. In 2004, Democrats retreated to the northeast, the west coast, and the upper midwest, which they nearly lost along with the rest of the country. In 2006, Republicans retreated to the deep south, the plains west, and the mountain west, which theynearly lost along with the rest of the country. In 2004, Republicans won 232 seats in the House of Representatives. In 2006, Democrats won233 seats in the House of Representatives.

For the first time in American history, there is no budding political majority in the works. No political party is consolidating the vast majority of the populace behind its platform; no coalition is dominating the bulk of our nation’s many regions. Instead, both parties have managed to carve out just over a third of the electorate for themselves, making use of base politics to ensure that those who identify with a political party vote for that party’s candidates with near unanimity. And in so doing, base politics has basically made itself obsolete, with each party’s regional and demographic base cancelling the other out, and with America’s independents, equidistant from both parties, now in charge of Washington’s fate.

The American center has shown that it can elect a 230-seat GOP House in one election, and then turn around and elect a 230-seat Democratic House the next. Given that all the gerrymandering and incumbent-protection measures in the book couldn’t save the GOP in 2006, it’s unlikely that Democratic institutional safeguards will fare any better. Truth be told, both parties are now at the mercy of mainstream Americans. And while the structure of our politics prevents a party of the center from developing, we may end up being governed largely from the center in the coming years.

While the long-term implications of all of this are anything but clear, I am at least somewhat confident that Americans will be very hesitant to bring back single-party government in 2008. Again, since 1968, we’ve had only a decade of one-party rule, with Americans taking multi-year breaks after each failed experiment with it.Given that Congress seems decidedly Democrat for at least a few terms, voters may be far less likely than even they currently anticipate to pull the lever for an Edwards or a Hillary, especially if the GOP provides an alternative amenable to our new centrist overlords.