I do not know whether McCain will win the election (I think he will, but who really knows?), but what I really don't know (and would like to know) is what will become of the Republican Party in a post-McCain campaign era. I have no doubt that the party will continue to exist and be a force in national politics; however, I wonder upon what intellectual foundation it will sit. The scenarios are interesting:

I fear that if McCain wins, that will mean the end of influence that conservatives have in this party. After all, McCain not only repudiated some of his prior positions, his reaction to the financial "crisis" has been one of repudiating the basic economic beliefs that he has said he holds. He has railed against the greed in Wall Street (read the private sector) and called for new, tougher regulation of the financial industry. How this squares with his Reaganist rhetoric in this past is beyond me.

The crisis provided an opportunity for McCain to not only talk the talk of the Reagan legacy but to walk the walk, and he failed miserably. The correct response to the "crisis" by a free marketer would have been to call oppose the bailout and call for less regulation (e.g., getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) not more. The vote for the bailout and the call for more regulation was an admission on his part that free market economics (his core belief we were told) does not work and that government intervention in basic economic transactions is necessary for the proper functioning of the economy. Instead of telling those individuals and businesses who made bad deals and saw their bets go bad that they would have to suffer the consequences of their risky behavior, instead, McCain advocated not only "rescuing" banks by infusing them with capital (stuffing them with increasingly worthless printed money), but also buying under-performing mortgages and renegotiating the deals - at tax payers' expense. These proposals were nothing short of disastrous for fiscal conservative thought in the party.

If McCain loses, this will obviously create a void to be filled within the next election cycle. Because McCain has alienated the fiscal conservatives in this party, you can bet on a very fractured party. In one corner will be the socially conservative/fiscally moderate voices lead by the likes of Palin and Huckabee. In the other corner will be the fiscally conservative (or what passes as such in the Republican Party these days)/socially moderate voices lead by the likes of Romney and Giuliani. The findamental question is whether these camps can come together to form something of a cohesive unit. It is my fear that Palin, especially, has so stoked anti-free market ferver in this cycle that the divide will not be healed. If the free marketers find their candidate, the social conservatives will sit out and vice versa.

It is tempting to imagine that the two camps will set aside their differences and join forces to restore a Republican to the White House; however, I fear that that just isn't likely to happen. The free marketers and extreme social conservatives are not really of the same party. A great many social conservatives espouse the small government line and decry runaway spending and fret about the size of government, but the truth is that a great many of these people are the beneficiaries of the largess they profess to hate. Fiscal conservatives know this and distrust them, and the social conservatives know at some level that they will not get as many government goodies if the fiscal conservatives regain power. This mutual disrespect and distrust have been exposed and picked at like annoying scabs by John McCain and Sarah Palin. One can only hope the scab eventually grows over and heals and does not become a major infection.