And had the Freedom Party break off from the Republicans? I know we discussed this during the Tea Party movement but they were (at the time) reasonable enough to know they stood a better chance twisting the Republican Party to their view (and they did). But the Freedom Party seems like they think they could go out and win elections (those that are not stolen from them) on their own a la the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party. Or maybe the rational Republicans™ can figure out how to toss the Freedom Caucus out of the party but for that to succeed they need the radical right voters to go with them.
Any thoughts? For me I hope it happens so I could rejoin the Rational Republican Party.
We all know that. But does the Freedumb Caucus know that? I think they have had so much success by others caving in to them, they think they are political gods that everyone loves. I mean, they honestly think the elections were stolen so clearly reality is a difficult concept for them.
They know they can’t go it alone. I can’t prove that, other than to demonstrate that they’ve never tried it.
(ETA: I don’t believe a single one of them believes the 2020 election was stolen. My opinion. Those guys are all full of shit. They lie, and they lie.)
So far, my sense is that the natural selection system of politics has elevated people to power who are all natural “yes men” that will cravenly do pretty much anything that they’re told to do (publicly).
To have a schism, you need someone willing to lead. That’s effectively the precisely lacking attribute of all those who populate Washington, and especially among the moderates.
A schism might develop but, at the moment, it would need to come from some outsider. At the moment, no such individual is on the horizon and, I suspect, anyone who tried would be ignored by the media for being plain, reasonable, and boring. It’s a difficult thing to get headlines when your main selling point is that you’re not one of the crazies.
The better answer, for the moment, is to follow Alaska’s lead and revise the election structure to elevate moderates; change the dynamics of the natural selection. That’s guaranteed to get things back into line, where waiting around for some knight in shining armor to appear is not more than a long-odds gamble.
No, you can’t have a schism because the Freedom Caucus doesn’t care about policy. They care about messaging. The Freedom Caucus has no purpose without a larger Republican Party to troll.
On the other hand, if we switched away from plurality voting in the primaries, then a variety of political parties could emerge.
As for Rational Republicans, that ship sailed during the early 1990s. Reagan’s tax cuts for billionaires didn’t deliver explosive growth (except of the entirely predictable sort when recovering from the deep double dip recession of Jan 1980 to Nov 1982). Clinton’s reversal of those plutocrat tax cuts preceded the Great Prosperity of the mid-1990s. Faced with an uncooperative reality, Gingrich penned the memo, Language: A Key Mechanism of Control during the 1990 election, an exercise in next-level political smearing.
There’s a great and wide potential coalition stretching from Milton Friedman to I dunno Dean Baker. But those who tut-tutted Trump by saying, “I wish he would tweet less,” are not members. Maybe Romney is, but most parties have more than a couple of leaders.
The Republican party represents a giant trough of money. There’s a pre-existing infrastructure of support and fundraising and messaging that would be lost if the FC split into their own organization. The primary purpose of these grifters, by a wide margin, is to siphon some of that money for themselves. If they make their own party, they would have to build all that support framework for themselves from scratch, and that’s actual effort, which is anathema to their purpose.
They will never, ever split from the main body. It would be like a remora or a tapeworm deciding to “go it alone.” It’s unthinkable.
(The Democratic party also represents a big trough of money, of course. Just a somewhat smaller one than the Pubs.)
Sure they do. In fact, they depend on the Republican’s running boring, ‘normal’ Primary challengers, which they can whip up their base against as part of the ‘swamp’. Let’s be clear, not one of these nutjobs is running on skills or accomplishments. Being able to own their own party as well as ‘the libs’ is just as much a part of their style (which leads to grift and the power to laugh as it all burns around them) as anything else.
IE, they’re reality TV stars playing politicians in front of a live, national audience. And if/when they get tired/cancelled, they’ll ghost write a book, go on talk show circuits, and get generous allowances to show up on Fox / OAN / etc.
Much as I’d like to see this, I dont think it can happen. Both the FC and the rest of the GOP know they need each other, the numbers especially, to be able to win elections. An actual splinter from the main party will guarantee Dem wins, and they all know this. Owning the libs is why they exist, so splitting their votes and losing to said libs is a non-starter.