The value of losing

Hmmm. BotW has said something inversely similar about Obama, though not from the McGovern angle. To wit:

...if Barack Obama can grow up to become president, the notion that America is an irredeemably racist society is absurd on its face. The perpetuation of this notion--and of the corollary that the GOP is a racist party--has been crucial to maintaining the Democratic hold on the black vote. By defusing fears of racism, an Obama presidency would make it harder for future Democrats to exploit those fears.

Similarly, the electoral butt-kicking of an evangelical GOP candidate would loosen the hold of the Religious Right on the GOP.

I despise the "only way to save the party is to let it shoot itself in the foot" mentality. Beyond the fact that I don't think the strategy is effective, I think its lazy. The people who seem to advocate the idea that the party has to hit rock bottom before things will improve usually are the people who aren't willing to do anything to help improve the party or things in general. They just want to sit back and pontificate about how "bad" things have gotten. Most people are able to improve their lives without totally ruining them first, so why is party politics any different? We don't have to wait until our party hasn't won an election in 50 years to put forth exciting candidates who have good ideas about how to run our country. Advocating otherwise is just a way of getting out of actually doing something to improve the party.

--Fern

I'm not a political junkie so I have no idea what the answer to this question is:

Are there any examples in support of WJ's thesis (perhaps even at the state level) where the overwhelming defeat of faction X's candidate has led to faction X happily accepting its spanking and returning to its previous statuts as pare inter pares?

but I'll sit back and wait for answers from others because I think it's tremendously important. It seems intuitive to me that when one faction gets a whupping like that, instead of going away they sulk while the other factions then ruin any chance of moderation ruling because they then get too big for their britches just like the former ruling faction did.

Wouldn't it be better if, instead of trying to purge the party of one faction or another, each group could mediate a truce with the others and figure out just how much social conservativism the party needs to keep while still focusing on a return to fiscal conservative principles? (While also figuring out how to sell the message of fiscal conservatism today?)

This thesis as you describe it needs to somehow incorporate the pathology of true believers, of which party fringes are always composed. The pathology is such that no defeat or setback, no matter how large or ugly or renunciatory, can lead to doubt on the part of the faithful. If the faithful spend years waiting for the world to end on a certain tuesday, the subsequent arrival of the following wednesday leads only to a redoubling of effort behind some small revision of the goal. Research has cataloged this, that's how it works. Belief not founded upon reason is not accessible TO reason.

But then, I sort of think the thesis isn't that the faithful change their world view. Rather it's that the fence sitters and conditional go alongers bail, and the opposition becomes more vocal. It's stilled a flawed thesis if it predicts that moderates will come to dominate the GOP. I think the pendulum swings within each party and that many variables effect this.Fringes within parties periodically become fairly powerful until the inevitable overreach that marginalizes them again.

Because the 2 parties dominate, certain stable dynamics tend to endure. I expect the GOP to continue to pander to a strongly conservative base during primaries and then swing to the middle later, in much the same way as the dems do their dance.

IMO, Huckabee would carry way more states than McGovern..most of the red states, plus Florida. Just none of the medium-sized purple swing states.

__________
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel. -Horace Walpole

I've used the McGovern/Goldwater template several times- as you aptly put it- when a faction "has become too big for its boots". And you're also right- that the effect of factional takeovers in 64 and 72 reverberated through their respective party's ideology for decades. In fact, I can't think of a single example where the hubristic faction has been crushed in the general and gone away into the darkness.