Jesusland's Leading Party

Just as we've been hoping: The actual end of the R party.

But putting clear blue water between moderate Republicanism and the religious right would undoubtedly give rise to a third party, a breakaway Christian Party. Such parties are familiar in American history, most recently in 1968 with George Wallace’s American Independent Party, and going back through Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996, Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace in 1948. Our Third Evangelical Awakening, which has lodged itself in the Republican party, will eventually begin to fall asleep, as did the two previous Awakenings, only more rapidly this time because of the spread of education and accelerated methods of communication.

The author, a professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College, wrote for the National Review for more than three decades, where he was senior editor, & wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, when governor of California, and for Richard Nixon. 

Nor is he of the opinion that the split will necessarily be bad for the remaining Republicans. As long as America's junior Taliban is marginalized in their own party, we may be able to tolerate "Eisenhower" Republicans for a while. Although their insane desire to return to the '50s, whether through Ike, sexual repression or Jim Crow gets sillier & sillier the farther we move from that imagined Golden Age.