By 2012 the only people left registered as republican will be the base
That might be < 5%. The other >95% will be registered independent/unaffiliated, of which some portion will express a preference to opinion pollsters for Palin or proto-Palin or other "maverick"/transmorgifying candidate/progressive.
Are you suggesting 1.The Democratic Party will rule forever?
single party dominance never lasts. The repugs are in about the same level of pointlessness as the conservatives in the UK in '97. I'd be shocked if the repugs didn't recover their wits faster than the brits. keep to the Fen Causeway
How about none of the above.
You refer to options 1, 2, 3? OK. That's hardly an exhaustive list of scenarios. I was kind of hoping, you would develop another along the line of "creative destruction" of the uniparty, implied by the size of independent/unaffiliated and, may I add now, nonparticipating/disaffected voters who refuse to identify with either faction --Republican or Democratic. What change in political sentiment and future partisan organization do these populations represent?
Do you detect any change?
And if "The repugs are in about the same level of pointlessness as the conservatives in the UK in '97" the Democratc and Labour parties are the one party of each state, no? It seems to me that, if "single party dominance never lasts," you expect unaffiliated populations will organize a formal alternative -- an opposition party bearing little or no resemblance to Republican/Tory or neo-con principles of governance?
As the US federal and state legislatures are not parliamentary structures, I would argue that here it will be quite a challenge to escape the paradigm of single party dominance. Media personalities are rather resistant to recognizing multiple parties. I'm sure this has been mentioned in teh blahgs. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
