The Trende Trend

Sean Trende is elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. Here he gives us his three takeaways from the Iowa caucuses. His items one and two are relatively prosaic: it was a good night for Romney, but Romney is not the inevitable nominee. You could argue with either but both are plausible.

His third takeaway would require a paradigm shift for both parties. Trende imagines that Santorum might herald the future of the GOP, even if he doesn't win the 2012 nomination.

Trende sees a possibility that the GOP will come to embody Santorum's mix of social conservatism and populism, a mix attractive to the white working class which the party increasingly represents. The shift could happen in this way:

The Democrats have been moving toward a top-bottom coalition of “New Economy” professionals and minority voters. A Santorum/Huckabee-esque Republican Party would probably hasten the exit of upscale suburbanites from the Republican coalition, and potentially reinvigorate the New Democrat approach to governing that dominated the party’s politics in the ’90s.

I'll believe it when I see it...but stranger things have happened.