With the falling poll numbers of President George W. Bush and the Republican congress, a lot of the focus has been on the Democrats' chances of taking over the House of Representatives.
What hasn't been thought of is who is going to pick up the pieces of the Republican party if it fails during 2006 and 2008. The Republican party has been under the domination of the neoconservatives, much to the resentment of the paleoconservatives. The paleoconservatives is another name for Neo-Confederates. Mostly the same people. I suppose there are other factions of conservatism also.
If the Republican party loses the House, Senate, and White House in the next two years, I doubt whether one group will be able to dictate the direction of the Republican party and be able to enforce it. Winning elections is the primary need of political parties, and those who win elections I would think would set the direction. Those whose political direction results in defeat, would, I think, have little or no influence.
I think the recent bolting of some Southern republican representatives on the Voting Rights Act is a manifestation of this. They are looking at what they think will win in their districts. They have rejected the direction of the national Republican party, which has nothing to offer at this time but defeat at the polls. The Republican party may go down to defeat nationally, but as members of a more explicitly Dixiecrat wing of the Republican party they will be re-elected.
In general there are more and more reports of the Republicans in congress ignoring the direction of the White House.
Here you can read both Pat Buchanan's Neo-Confederate comprehension of the Civil War and his hopes for directing the Republican party after a national economic calamity.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50279
Am I making a prediction of the future? No, definitely not. I only wish to point out a possible future. Hopefully I am wrong entirely. If I am right, the attack on the Voting Rights Act is just a harbinger of what the future of the Republican party in the South will be like. It may well be what the Republican party will be like nationally, I really don't know.
In summary, nothing discredits a leadership like an overwhelming defeat. If the Republicans sustain great losses I would think that the entire question of the direction of the Republican party in national politics will be open. Historical developments are often that a certain state of things abruptly change to another state of things or a fluid state of change, like a phase change in a physical system. Often the coming change is not forseen.
If the Republicans lose my prediction, guess, is that Neo-Confederacy, either as itself or under the guise of paleoconservatism will be much more strongly mainstreamed into the American conservative movement than it already is, but more importantly will be given a voice at the table of American conservatism.