This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 7, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Who will rule the GOP Roost in the wake of the party's solid rejection at the polls?

Is the party doomed to be led by people like Mike Huckaby, Tim Polenti, and Mitt Romney?

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Mike Tanner comments.

The new face of the Republican Party is Mike Huckaby.

Your thoughts. Well I certainly think it represents a major faction in the Republican Party right now,

which is this a populist faction combining very hardline positions on social issues with sort of an anti big business, anti-trade, anti-immigrant type of group.

This is sort of the group that they talk about the small town America that's brought up on very conservative social values and cultural values, but also is hurting economically and is therefore resentful in many ways. These are the people that Barack

Obama famously criticized. But I do think that there is this wing of the

Republican Party out there and Mike Huckaby certainly will be one of the primary

spokesman for this group as you go forward in the

international battles that the Republican Party is about to undergo.

If it's true that Barack Obama is constrained when he becomes president and Republicans are essentially handed significant gains in the House and Senate two years from now without having done anything?

What's their incentive to clearly articulate some kind of limited government conservatism?

Well I think the Republicans found out this time around that simply being against Barack Obama is not sufficient to get them elected.

That they've got to come up with some sort of coherent message as to what they're for.

And the problem is that you have three different factions within the Republican Party right now.

On one hand, you've got the sort of remnants of the big government

conservatives now they've renamed themselves Sam's Club conservatives

uh... these are people who think that uh... you have to basically acquiesce in the liberal agenda but use

conservative ideas in getting there. So if the public wants national health

care, conservatives should go along and give them national health care, but with some sort of conservative market-oriented bells and whistles applied to it.

...