Pete Abel over at TMV discusses four reasons why the the Republicans may be facing an imminent demise.  That seems to be what I’m seeing all over the place these days: The Republicans are a dead party because of x reason.

Not so fast.

Personally, I am getting sick of all the bloggers and media sources out there suggesting that somehow the Republican party is going the way of the dodo (or the Whigs).  They’re not.  They are hurting, but so were the Democrats for six years (twelve if you include Congress).  The Democrats have dominated for the last two elections for two reasons: the war in Iraq and the economic crisis.  But doing well in two major elections doesn’t mean the other party should pack up and head home.  Rather, that party just needs to get their act together.

Imagine, if you will, that it is 1994 once again.  You’re the Republican party and you’ve taken back control of Congress from the Democrats after 40 years.  Now it’s 1996 and you’re still in control.  Bit of a blow to the Dems.  1998 comes and goes, and the Republicans are still doing well.

Then 2000 comes and your guy barely wins the presidency, but hey, now you control two branches, with roughly the same count of Senate seats the Democrats have now (assuming they don’t win any more seats).  By now it seems like the Democrats are out of the picture for a while.  A party bannished to the opposition.  Small fries, nobodies.  In 2004, your party wins even bigger.

Where am I going with this?  Simply, that for twelve years, it looked like the Democrats were thrown to the wolves.  Then in 2006 they came back.  They still have yet to prove themselves, I think, but they did it.  It took twelve years, but it was achieved.

My point is that there is little proof of a repeat of the dissolution of the Whigs that led to Democratic-Republican domination for several years.  The Republicans are hurting, and mostly because of a rise in unpopularity of the Iraq war and the economic crisis.  But that is all I see.  A wound, but not a fatal one.

The Democrats are going to mess up.  It’s just history.  That’s what politicians do, they mess up.  Messing up is what led the Republicans to the situation in 2006.  The Iraq strategy was in shambles.  The surge and Anbar awakening helped immesurably, of course, but by then it was too late.  By the time was surge was in full force another until-then-somewhat-dormant crisis was awakening: the credit crunch.

So, the Democrats will eventually have their day of reckoning.  It could take as little as two years, or it could take twelve; who knows.  So how does this mean that the Republicans can make a comeback?

The “oncoming Democratic majority” assumes a shift in the political ideology of the country.  Some like to say it’s center-right, but given how quickly people are becoming Independents these days, I wonder if it actually might be closer to the center (however you wish to define that).  People are more willing, more than ever, to consider a candidate from the party they may never have voted for in prior elections.  But this also means that the Republicans are still under consideration for many of these people.

The Republicans do need to regroup.  They need to find their platform, but also need to win back some of those they lost to Obama, namely minorities and the young vote.  There is work to be done, but I think the Republicans can do it.

This isn’t the mid-1860s with the Whigs.  That party broke up largely due to the slavery issue.  While there is an internal debate of what Republican-brand conservatism is, it’s one the party will have two years to decide.  I think internal debating over platform is much less fatal than a core human-rights issue like slavery was.  There is potential for a party breakup, of course, but much less so than if it were over some fundamental outside issue.

The Republicans will be back.  It may take some time…or it may not.  But I think suggestions of the party being in its death throes are overly exaggerated.