This article gives far to much credit to the “Alt-Right”. They’re a few hundred thousand bitter losers on message boards many of whom are either too young to vote or not even US citizens. They have no coherent ideology at all, but have just embraced Trump because he’s “a based shitlord” and it’s now more daring for them to rebel to the extreme right wing than the extreme left wing, because they’re “sticking it to the establishment”.
They’re insignificant and will have no effect on the election outcome whatsoever.
Ok, I buy that Trump is a dead end. But I don’t buy this:
I don’t see how. Trump got where he did by being Trump, and being stealthy is not part of the gig.
I think the Republican party will splinter because it HAS to. The far right has become the mainstream and the former mainstream simply cannot tolerate the far right any … further.
See - I’m not really seeing evidence that the former mainstream, as a whole, as a real problem with alt-Right or the Teahadists. The mainstream’s whole thing has been acting like professors and speaking in code words. Now that Trump has blown everyone’s cover, there’s no point to that any more.
It’s the #NeverTrump group who are the outsiders now. The #NeverTrump rump.
The majority of Republicans - including most of congress - are standing by their man. If Trump loses, I don’t think they’re suddenly all going to find the gumption to stand up to his angry supporters. This is especially true if Trump starts his own news group and continues meeting with supporters.
I really saw it get started with the “cuckservative” meme. That’s when some bloggers at HotAir, for example, started saying “Wait, have the Democrats been right all along about the racism in our midst?”
They got Trump elected to the top GOP position so I wouldn’t discount them completely. Sure, maybe the core of them are what you describe, but with Trump taking them mainstream, a lot of regular conservatives are falling for it too. Even with their coming loss in the election, they are here to stay, they’re probably not going to go quietly back into their holes. Congress will be filled with people who appeal to them in small, rural districts and red states.
I’d argue that only a small percentage of people that voted for Trump in the primary are actually what that article means by “alt-right”. From what I’ve seen a lot of Trump supporters are angry middle class disillusioned by the failures of both parties to address jobs disappearing overseas and the shrinking of the middle class. That’s a genuine and valid issue. The ones who are openly shouting nationalist and white supremacist solutions to that problem are a small minority but they’re the loudest so they seem much bigger than they are.
A sensible and reasonable analysis, which is what makes me skeptical. Another is that its simply an example of a human stampede, like the pet rock. Not at all unusual for people to rush to something simply because its different, especially when they are smart enough to realize that they want things to be different, but not smart enough to figure out exactly what they want changed, and why.