The GOP must have forgotten to turn off the Republican dirty mouth machine when the presidential election was over.

Newt Gingrich, for instance, has once again emitted a stream of political filth, this time claiming that the folks who have been bashed, scapegoated, ostracized and even murdered for being homosexuals have suddenly managed to create “a gay and secular fascism in this country.” He continued “I think this is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.”

Why? Because loving folks want to get married, are willing to stick up for their rights as humans in America, and refuse to be denied equal protection under the law? Is it any wonder that the GOP has become a minority party? Careless, rude, politically salacious, the GOP can’t keep its nasty mouth shut even when voters have overwhelmingly rejected their smears and overkills.

Is this kind of stuff going to happen in Albuquerque in the mayoral election of 2009? As odd as it sounds, I don’t think so.

The mayoral election provides a slight but intriguing chance to demonstrate to the rest of the country what a reinvented and revamped Republican Party might look like, and what it might mean to be a new kind of Democrat.

Local versions of national problems are too severe in Albuquerque for rank partisanship of the kind we’ve become used to since 2000.

President-elect Obama has the right idea surrounding himself with competing viewpoints from which to craft pragmatic policy. We need to do that at home too.

And current rabid Republicans and centrist Democrats will never be able to do that. They’ll either kowtow or fight to the death over nothing.

At some point, sooner than later I hope, the GOP will reinvent itself as the Democrats have done over the last two years. It will be a searing process, one that causes anguish and alienation among the ranks.

This reinvention of political parties and politicians is a cliche by now. But it does happen all the time. After the so-called Reagan Revolution, Democrats reinvented themselves as centrists, or as many Greens, Ralph Nader and others came to call them — Republicrats. They had some success for a short while with the Clintons, but remained a fractured party until President-elect Obama.

When Republican elitists dolled up like populists and adopted the Southern Strategy, they had much greater success for a much longer time, using their genius for public relations to build up alienated and disgruntled political markets. Then, using increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, they whipped up fundamentalists, homophobes, racists, anti-government anarchists and separatists into a froth and then unleashed their hordes of soon-to-be bailout plutocrats to suck the economy dry. The GOP eventually became so obnoxious that all its wizardry from the Dark Side of the Force couldn’t bamboozle voters into submission anymore.

The Democrats have already started their reinvention with the election of Barack Obama as our next president. Then this week they backslid into their familiar spinelessness when they let turncoat Joe Lieberman retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. That was not a good message for the Senate to send to 63.7 million voters who sided with the Democrats. There’s a long way still to go to create a solid Democratic Party out of unions, middle class wage earners, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, feminists, human rights internationalists, peace activists, and the ethnic minorities that make up their election-winning base.

In the October 2009 Albuquerque mayoral election, I really don’t think a centrist Democrat or an ankle biting attack dog Republican can make it through to the run off. It seems to me that the candidate of either party who represents what I’d call a return to party basics has the overwhelming chance to win.

A Republican, who is a true fiscal conservative, aimed at getting real value for every public dollar spent, and who is also a personable, consensus builder divorced from the all-or-nothing, hate-based, it’s-mine-and-you-can’t-have-it crowd, might fare well against a centrist Democrat with no clear vision.

A fiscally responsible kitchen-table Democrat with an array of solid cost-effective solutions to the enormous economic and environmental problems Albuquerque faces could be a powerful candidate, particularity if he or she had the verbal judo skills of President-elect Obama.

Water shortages, rising gas prices this summer, a housing industry on the rocks, local and national chain retail stores closing right and left, consumers wisely refusing to consume, lenders refusing to extend credit, American auto manufacturers refusing to build efficient cars you or I would buy, along with a host of other issues, not to mention chaotic weather and government’s need for new revenue –- with problems like these we don’t need the chicken-hearted, the wishy-washy or the mad-dog ideologue running for mayor and winning.

We need reasonable candidates who represent the historic core of both parties. We need them to debate the real issues, and to forge solutions most people can live with and afford.